6 Key features of Swift Language that makes it Game Changer

Apple has announced its new language Swift for iPhone application development.

What is Swift programming language?

Swift is a way to write iOS and OSX applications.

Which framework does Swift programming language use?

Swift is endorsed by the existing cocoa framework.

What’s the good thing about Swift?

It has a highly optimized compiler to enhance its performance and to optimize development aspects.

The Scalabilty of Swift language for App development:

Considering the scale of application that developer can create using swift language, the application can be scaled from “Hello World” program to the entire operating system.

Looking at the new features of swift language it seems to be a game changer.

Main Features of the Swift Language

Following are the main features of swift language that makes iOS application so much optimized, powerful and enhanced.

1. Supports playground:

It is one of the main features of Swift Language that has been added to Xcode. With playground feature, the developer can write the code separately and test it out without hampering other existing code. The developer can see the result of playground code without running whole application, so it saves time for development. It is very much important if a developer wants to test the code (project module) without hampering other existing codes.

2. Type Inference:

Till now it was mandatory to explicitly mention data type for the variable. With type inference add-on main features of swift language it is not mandatory to write data type for each variable. It explicitly catches data type of variable using the initial value that developer has assigned.

Example 1: Variable “pc” is Int type variable as explicitly data type mentioned in the declaration.

var pc:Int = 10

Example 2: Variable “pc” is Int type variable as integer value has assigned to it.

var pc = 10

3. Typesafe language:

One more main features of Swift language is, it is type safe language. It prevents passing different data type value to a different data type variable. It catches the exception at compile time itself if it finds any conflict in data type. So it reduces run time overhead ensue of this application runs faster. It also reduces run time application crashing.

4. Optional data type:

The optional data type is used when the value to the specific variable is absent. This data type variable may have value or no value. It is very much relevant to “nil” keyword in objective-c. But there is some difference between optional data type and “nil” keyword, that makes optional data type special. One of the difference is “nil” keyword doesn’t”t work for a certain object like a struct.

5. Unicode support:

Unicode character consists of almost all the characters in each and every native language.
Earlier variables and constants name we were using has its own naming conversions like variable should not contain special characters or it should not start with an integer value. But in Swift programming language, even developer can use Unicode character for variables and constants naming convention.

6. Collection Types:

It supports two types of collection objects. One is an array and another is a dictionary. Both array and dictionary are used to store multiple objects having the same data type. Array contents object in an ordered manner, whereas in dictionary objects get stored in an unsorted manner. Dictionary has objects and each object has its corresponding key. Stored data objects in a dictionary are accessed by using a key.

Bonus Tips: If you are into the App development, you should avoid making common mistakes while App development.

If you know the using development tools, developing an app in iOS is easy as much as developing Android app through Android SDK.

I am exploring and learning the iOS swift language and above are the main features of swift language that I came across while exploring.

I will come with more add-on main features of the Swift language and will let you know. Feel free to comment if you think any main features of swift language that we should have to mention here.