If you're reading this article, then chances are that you have heard of a new programming language called Swift. Apple released Swift during this year's WWDC, the company's annual developer conference, and for most of us it came as a complete surprise. The last thing developers were expecting was a brand new programming language to power the next generation of iOS and OS X applications.
While Swift will feel familiar if you've been using Objective-C to develop iOS or OS X applications, there are a number of important differences. You'll also have to become familiar with Swift's elegant and modern syntax. I'm going to kick this series off by showing you in what ways Swift differs from Objective-C and why those differences are a good thing. Let's get started.
1. Prerequisites
Programming
Throughout this series, I will make references to Objective-C and compare the Swift programming language with Objective-C. However, to follow along there is no need to be familiar with Objective-C.
That said, it is important that you have experience with a programming language. While this series focuses on Swift, it doesn't cover the basics of programming. I expect you to be familiar with variables, constants, functions, control flow, and object-oriented programming.
If you're familiar with Objective-C, Java, Ruby, PHP, or JavaScript, then you won't have problems understanding the concepts explained in this series. As a matter of fact, you'll quickly learn that Swift shares similarities with a number of popular programming languages, including Objective-C.
Xcode
Swift is only supported by Xcode 6 and you need to install the latest version of Apple's IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to follow along. You can either download Xcode from the App Store or Apple's Developer Center.
2. Swift
Compared to Objective-C or Java, Swift is an expressive, succinct language that often reminds me of Ruby and JavaScript. Even though the creator of Swift, Chris Lattner, took inspiration from other languages, Swift very much is a language that stands on its own feet.
As you may know, Objective-C is a strict superset of C. Swift, however, is not. While Swift uses curly braces and shares a number of keywords with the C programming language, Swift is not compatible with C.
Swift is a modern programming language that feels intuitive, especially if you're used to Java or C-based programming languages like Objective-C. During the development and design of Swift, Chris Lattner focused on a number of key characteristics that ended up defining the language.
Safety
Safety is one of Swift's foundations. You will quickly learn that Swift is very different from Objective-C in terms of safety and this will directly impact the code you write. If you've worked with Objective-C, then this will take some getting used to.
LLVM
Chris Lattner also designed the LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) compiler and it shouldn't be a surprise that Swift is built with the LLVM compiler. The result is speed, power, and reliability. Swift is significantly faster than Objective-C in most scenarios. Read this article from Jesse Squires if you're interested in the nitty-gritty details.
Type Inference
Type safety is one of Swift's key features. Swift inspects your code at compile time and warns you about type mismatches. This means that you can catch errors earlier, avoiding a range of common bugs.
Luckily, Swift helps you with this. Swift is often smart enough to infer the type of variables and constants, which means you don't have to explicitly declare the type of each variable and constant. In the following code snippet, we declare a variable a and assign the value "this is a string" to it. Swift is smart enough to infer that a is of type String.
var a = "this is a string"
This is a trivial example, but you'll quickly learn that Swift can also handle more complex scenarios.
Variables and Constants
Constants are useful in C and Objective-C, but most developers use them sparingly. In Swift, constants are just as important and common as variables. If the value of a variable doesn't change, then that variable should be a constant. Variables are declared using the var keyword while constants are declared using the let keyword.
var a = 1 // variable let b = 1 // constant
Not only does this improve the intent, it also improves safety by avoiding that the variable's value is changed by accident. We'll take a closer look at variables and constants a bit later in this article.
Semicolons
In Swift, semicolons are not required. You can use semicolons, for example, to write multiple statements on the same line, but they are not required. Take a look at the following example to better understand the concept.
var a = 1 var b = 2 var c = 1; var d = 2;
Know that we've barely scratched the surface. You'll learn about a lot more features and concepts throughout this series. Instead of overloading you with more theory, I suggest you get your feet wet by writing some code. This brings us to one of the best features of Swift and Xcode 6, playgrounds.
3. Playgrounds
In Xcode 6, Apple introduced playgrounds. Playgrounds are the perfect tool for learning Swift. A playground is an interactive environment in which you can write Swift and immediately see the result. Not only does it make learning Swift more fun, it is much faster and more intuitive than setting up a project in Xcode.
As a matter of fact, it's so easy that we might as well jump in and create our first playground. Open Xcode 6 and select New > Playground... from the File menu. Name the playground and set Platform to iOS.
Tell Xcode where you'd like to save the playground and click Create. Instead of creating a folder with a bunch of files and folders, a playground is nothing more than a file with a .playground extension.
The user interface you're presented with couldn't be simpler. On the left, you see a code editor with a comment at the top, an import statement for importing the UIKit framework, and one line of code that shouldn't be too difficult to understand. On the right, you see the output or results generated by the code on the left.
Let's take a moment to understand the code in our new playground. The first line should look familiar if you've worked with Objective-C, PHP, or JavaScript. Comments in Swift start with two forward slashes or, in the case of multiline comments, start with /* and end with */.
Because we selected iOS as the platform when we created the playground, Xcode added an import statement for the UIKit framework. This gives us access to every class and constant declared in this framework.
The third line looks familiar, but there are a few things that need clarifying. We declare a variable str and assign a string to it. This line of code is easy to understand, but note that the variable's name is preceded by the var keyword instead of the variable's type as you'd expect in Objective-C. The same statement in Objective-C would look something like this:
NSString *str = @"Hello, playground";
In Objective-C, we would replace the var keyword with the variable's type, prefix the string with an @ symbol, and end the statement with a semicolon. It's important to understand that the var keyword doesn't replace the type specifier in Objective-C. It's nothing more than a keyword to indicate that str is a variable as opposed to a constant. Let me explain this in more detail. Add the following line of code to the playground.
let hello = "Hello, playground"
The let keyword tells the compiler hello is a constant, not a variable. Both str and hello are of type String, but str is a variable while hello is a constant. The difference is simple to understand by adding two more lines of code.
str = "This is a variable." hello = "This is a constant."
Assigning a new value to str isn't a problem. Assigning a new value to hello, however, results in an error. Xcode tells us that it cannot assign a new value to hello, because hello is a constant, not a variable. This is another key feature of Swift, which will take some getting used to.
The idea is simple. If the value of a variable is not going to change, then it should be a constant instead of a variable. While this may seem like a semantic detail, I guarantee you that it will make your code safer and less prone to errors. Be prepared, because you're going to see the let keyword a lot in this series.
We'll use playgrounds extensively throughout this series, because it's a great way to learn the language. There are a few other powerful playground features that we haven't covered yet, but we first need to understand the basics of the Swift language before we can benefit from those.
Conclusion
I still have to meet a developer that doesn't like Swift and that's saying something. Swift has a number of concepts that require some getting used to, but I'm pretty confident that you too will end up enjoying Swift, appreciating its power, elegance, and conciseness. In the next installment of this series, we start exploring the basics of Swift.