7 Reasons Why You Should Learn Swift

Released in 2014, Swift is Apple’s official programming language, used to develop iOS apps. It was developed as a replacement for Objective-C because the latter lacked modern requirements. Swift is a modern language that combines the best of C and Objective-C and provides iOS app developers with a solution to build lightning-fast iOS apps. Any challenges that developers faced previously, Apple has tried to resolve them with the introduction of the Swift programming language. Ever since its release, Swift has grabbed the attention of developers and became the primary choice of language for iOS app development. Backed by one of the largest tech giants in the world and having wide and vast community support, Swift is all set to become the dominant programming language in the world.

Learning Swift is a must if you want to develop native iOS apps. And there are some strong reasons why you should learn Swift. Let’s take a look.

1. Easy to Read and Learn

Swift is relatively easy to learn. It can be challenging only if you do not have prior experience with any other programming language. Well, that’s the case with any language and not just Swift. If it’s your first time learning a programming language, it can be a bit daunting. But if you can pick the basic concepts, the job will be quite easy. Yes, it is vast and complex but not complex enough to make it difficult to understand.

Swift has a simple, clear, and concise syntax that makes APIs easier to read and maintain, and thus is easy to grasp even if you do not possess any prior coding experience. You neither need to add semi-colons to end a line while coding nor parenthesis to surround conditional expressions inside if/else statements. Furthermore, Inferred types make the code cleaner and less error-prone while modules eliminate headers and provide namespaces.

Swift codes also resemble the English language that makes it easy for beginners to understand and for the developers to detect the faulty code. In fact, Apple itself says that Swift was designed to be anyone’s first programming language.

2. Easy to Maintain

Earlier in C and Objective-C, developers had to maintain two separate code files- the header file (.h) and an implementation file (.m) to build an executable app. Swift eliminates the need for a two-file requirement. It combines both these files into a single file (.swift). The LLVM compiler and XCode can easily identify dependencies within the code or check code errors to perform incremental builds automatically and improve code efficiency. As Swift drops the idea of a boilerplate code, programmers get more time to create app logic and improve code quality. Also, with statistically-typed languages like Swift, the rate of error is relatively low, which means that the codebase will be easier to maintain as it grows in size and complexity.

3. Swift is Safe

Apart from being fast and efficient, Swift is a very safe language as well that safeguards you from making programming mistakes and improves readability. It puts an end to the entire class of unsafe code. To ensure that the code remains error-free, variables are always initialized before use, arrays and integers are checked for overflow, and memory is automatically managed. Its simple syntax along with better error-handling capabilities also encourages iOS developers to write clean and consistent code.

Adding further to its safety features, Swift objects can never be nil. The compiler will display a compile-time error every time you try to create or use a nil object. This allows you to write cleaner and safer code and prevents a huge category of runtime crashes in your app. The runtime crash will stop right on the line of the code every time it locates a nil optional variable. This allows programmers to fix the issues right away.

In the case where nil is valid, Swift has a feature called Optionals. An optional may contain nil but the syntax of Swift compels you to deal with it safely using the “?” syntax which sends a message to the compiler that you understand the behavior.

4. Optimized Memory Usage

Swift uses Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) to handle memory management at compile time. Reference counting is a technique used to store the number of references, pointers, or handles to a resource, such as an object, a block of memory, disk space, etc. In garbage collection algorithms, reference counts may be used to deallocate objects that are no longer needed.

In Swift, ARC tracks and manages your app’s memory usage in real-time to make sure that it is not consuming too much space. This allows developers to use their brainpower on focusing on app logic and new features instead of worrying too much about memory management. Every time a new instance of a class is created, ARC stores the information about the type of instance and values of its stored properties. Every instance also contains a property called reference count, which keeps track of all the properties, constants, and variables that have a strong reference to itself. A strong reference is a pointer that increases the reference count of the instance of a class it is pointing to by one. Whenever it reaches zero, the object is deallocated. This way, ARC knows when to keep the class instances in memory and when to free them.

5. Swift is fast

Swift was built with performance in mind. During its launch, Apple itself revealed that the primary motive behind its development was speed improvement and rapid execution of app logic

Swift is fast and efficient. Its simple syntax allows developers to build apps faster. As stated on the Apple website, apps built with Swift are 2.6x faster than Objective-C and 8.4x faster than Python 2.7 and it is expected to get even better with future releases.

It also generates faster code for release and debugs builds. Another reason behind its improved speed performance is the use of a single code file instead of two (already discussed above).

6. Interoperability with Objective-C

Interoperability refers to the ability of one programming language to work together with another programming language. If you have been using Objective-C for iOS app development and want to switch to Swift later or vice versa to add new features and functionalities, you can do that effortlessly. Swift code co-exists alongside your existing Objective-C files in the same project, having complete access to the Objective-C API, thereby making it easy to adopt.

7. Swift Developers are in demand

The app market is booming and with a multitude of app development companies around, there’s a huge demand for Swift developers. Once you have acquired the skills and personality traits to become an iOS app developer (Swift), you will never be short of job opportunities and will get an attractive income as well.

The Bottom Line

Swift development community is always working towards the enhancement of the language. Ever since it stepped into the market, it has received a massive rate of adoption among developers. And more and more people are becoming a part of this community. So if you are thinking to learn Swift, now is the time. It will take a few months to learn the basic understanding of Swift (if you have no experience with any programming language) provided that you invest an hour into it daily. With time and practice, you will learn more and get better at it.