At the last Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced a new programming language called Swift. The company created this language exclusively for Apple developers and its goal is to streamline Mac OS and iOS app development. So, how will Swift affect Apple developer community and particularly iOS app developers?
Swift will make things easier
It looks like Apple created Swift to speed up and simplify the development process. This new high-level coding language is powerful like Objective-C and offers the flexibility of languages like Node.js and Python. Swift provides automatic memory management, has a “playground” feature that makes debugging easier, and uses a simplified syntax that is less prone to errors and is easier to learn.
To cut a long story short, Swift will make it easier to develop for iOS. The introduction of Swift also indicates that Apple wants to move away from Objective-C, a difficult to learn and bug prone language. It also means that Swift will open the market for cheaper iOS apps.
Swift will create more competition
Because Objective-C was a difficult to learn and time-consuming programming language, there was only a handful of high-level iOS developers. But with the introduction of Swift more people will be able to start developing for iOS, which means greater competition for the current developers.
Another thing developers should note is that Swift still relies on Objective-C and uses the same frameworks. This could possibly lead to interoperability problems. But that wouldn’t be too much of an issue for developers who are proficient in Objective-C and know their stuff.
