What is "swift"

Swift is a programming language for applications and systems introduced by Apple at the WWDC conference in June 2014 and distributed as open source. The language uses the LLVM compiler that translates Swift bitcode into native language. Supports object-oriented and functional development models. interopera with and / Apis to , , from Apple and also to the operating system .

Please use tag for issues related to Openstack’s Object/blob store, and the tag for issues related to Parallel scripting language.

promises to modernise the development experience on providing features such as:

  • generic
  • error handling
  • type security
  • type inference
  • "namespaces"
  • improved safety (stack overflow protection, use before startup, etc.)
  • functional programming elements (map, filter, extensions)

among others.

The syntax of maintains some elements of , offering an extensive new vocabulary for its new features, plus it is familiar and has structures similar to several modern languages such as, Rust, Haskell, Ruby, Python, C#, CLU, Javascript, Java, offering a short learning curve for programmers of these languages.

The language can use existing frameworks in and , as and , and can be used in conjunction with in applications. Applications are compiled in standard binary and can be run in 10.9 or more, 7 or higher, and .

Swift 2.0 was introduced by Apple in the WWDC on June 8, 2015. They added new features like the "error handling model" with do, try, catch and throw`.

IBM was the first company to develop a browser-based Swift Sandbox.

Swift Open Source

Recently (December 2015) Apple announced the Swift Language as Open Source and the website is https://swift.org. In this site you can find general information about the language but also some useful links to:

  • BLOG
  • DOWNLOAD AREA
  • GETTING STARTED Guide
  • Reference documentation
  • Source Code
  • Swift community
  • Ways to Contribute

There are also links to the following Projects:

  • COMPILER & STANDARD LIBRARY
  • PACKAGE MANAGER
  • CORE LIBRARIES
  • REPL AND DEBUGGER

This last one very interesting, because with REPL integrated to Debugger we have a Playground to play on the console integrating with the Runtime environment in a very sophisticated way.

Apple provides Swift documentation in the references below:

References

Books

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