Apple Announces New Programming Language Called Swift

[DEAD7]

"At WWDC 2014 today, Apple announced Swift, a new programming language. According to a report by Ars Technica: 'Swift seems to get rid of Objective C's reliance on defined pointers; instead, the compiler infers the variable type, just as many scripting languages do. ... The new language will rely on the automatic reference counting that Apple introduced to replace its garbage-collected version of Objective C. It will also be able to leverage the compiler technologies developed in LLVM for current development, such as autovectorization. ... Apple showed off a couple of cases where implementing the same algorithm in Swift provided a speedup of about 1.3X compared to the same code implemented in Objective C.'"

 

[Chris.B]

Good.

programming is the future. Very soon it will be required in all schools

 

[Uncle Kingpin]

so now you can almost do in c-objective what you already can in python, ruby, etc.

 

[Data-Hawk]

so now you can almost do in c-objective what you already can in python, ruby, etc.

Python/Ruby is slow as hell for just about any type of applications though ( since they are interpreted ). Swift will be a systems programming language w/ syntax like a scripting language.

Thank God because objective-c syntax is terrible. Could never really get used to it.

Swift documentation :

The Swift Programming Language: About Swift

 

[Data-Hawk]

ahh, Guess I'll have to get used to this also..

class Vehicle {
    var numberOfWheels: Int
    var maxPassengers: Int
    func description() -> String {
        return "\(numberOfWheels) wheels; up to \(maxPassengers) passengers"
    }
    init() {
        numberOfWheels = 0
        maxPassengers = 1
    }
}

Not sure whats the point of having var numberOfWheels: int when you can just have var numberOfWheels( and determine the type at runtime ) or have ( int numberOfWheels; ) . Its not exactly cleaner syntax but I guess it'll help with speed since you know the type before running.... ... Guess I'll have to read up on the benefits.



Edit: opps my bad, you can do it with var variablename

let maximumNumberOfLoginAttempts = 10
var currentLoginAttempt = 0

Ahh actually this language is starting to grow on me already. It's extremely easy to pick up and if it can maintain speed close to or better than Objective-C....

 

[End Cruelty]

subs

 

[Spatial Paradox]

ahh, Guess I'll have to get used to this also..

class Vehicle {
    var numberOfWheels: Int
    var maxPassengers: Int
    func description() -> String {
        return "\(numberOfWheels) wheels; up to \(maxPassengers) passengers"
    }
    init() {
        numberOfWheels = 0
        maxPassengers = 1
    }
}

Not sure whats the point of having var numberOfWheels: int when you can just have var numberOfWheels( and determine the type at runtime ) or have ( int numberOfWheels; ) . Its not exactly cleaner syntax but I guess it'll help with speed since you know the type before running.... ... Guess I'll have to read up on the benefits.

I'd say it's a nice hint to whoever's reading the code (including yourself if you ever come back to it and don't realize they're initialized in the init() function). Though the names of those variables suggest an Int...

Some of the syntax reminds me of Scala...

Ahh actually this language is starting to grow on me already. It's extremely easy to pick up and if it can maintain speed close to or better than Objective-C....

If what they claimed during the keynote is true, it is faster than Objective-C already, at least for the algorithms they showed off during the keynote. I'd love to know more about why that is, but I suspect Swift being more statically typed has something to do with it

I need to stop slacking and re-up my iOS developer membership already

 

[unit321]

"At WWDC 2014 today, Apple announced Swift, a new programming language. According to a report by Ars Technica: 'Swift seems to get rid of Objective C's reliance on defined pointers; instead, the compiler infers the variable type, just as many scripting languages do. ... The new language will rely on the automatic reference counting that Apple introduced to replace its garbage-collected version of Objective C. It will also be able to leverage the compiler technologies developed in LLVM for current development, such as autovectorization. ... Apple showed off a couple of cases where implementing the same algorithm in Swift provided a speedup of about 1.3X compared to the same code implemented in Objective C.'"

That's nice. I don't program on mac OS so it doesn't apply to me.

 

[Type Username Here]

I'm interested but the limitations are troublesome in terms of development. I'll keep an eye on it (along with about 5 other languages )