A lot of
people, who have an interest in developing an iOS application, have one major
question in their mind that whether they should learn Swift or Objective-C to
make an application. Talking about the Swift language, it is a brand-new
programming language that released by Apple in 2014.
The language
has taken the whole community of iOS by surprise. Since last two years, the
Swift core team has restated rapidly, releasing various major and minor
versions of the language to the community’s delight and dismay.
For existing
developers, Swift has some of the wonderful inferences as it has introduced a
little bit of complexity for newbies, who are looking to learn iOS development.
Moreover, Swift language is a lot less verbose than Objective-C, so you just
need to write less code to get the same results.
Swift or Objective-C – Which Language You Should
Learn?
Both Swift and
Objective-C have their own features and importance, so you should learn both
the programming languages. To get a clear idea why exactly, let’s talk about
the merits of learning each language on its own.
You can find a
lot of articles and blogs on the web that touch on this topic method it from
the standpoint of an existing developer and vendor features like lack of
pointers and type safety as none of which matter to beginners.
Reasons to Learn Swift
Learning Swift
is a good choice for you if you want to understand the basics of programming
language. This advanced programming language is much easier to work with.
Though, Objective-C is more than 30 years old and was written at a time when
different considerations had to be made about how we interacted with computers.
Even today,
these considerations are highly important to know and comprehend and can make
learning the basics of programming quite complex. The first point that you
should consider is the basics of a programming language are a lot easier and
simpler to comprehend with Swift than with Objective-C.
Interactive Environment
When Apple
launched Swift language, the company also released two rich and highly
interactive coding environments, which will help beginners to learn how to
code. Xcode Playgrounds is there that is an environment and
a part of a Mac application called Xcode and enables you to learn and explore
Swift, prototype parts of your application and develop learning environments
for others.
Apart from
this, there is also one application that is known as Swift Playgrounds,
delivering the same interactive environment as Xcode Playgrounds; however, in a
much more exploratory fashion, enabling you to use your iPad’s hardware also.
From this, we
came to the point #2 – the environment for learning Swift is far more engaging
and delivers instant feedback, making concepts a lot easier to learn. It is one
such type of environment, which is not unique to Swift; however, Apple is doing
some of the wonderful things that are mainly with the iPad application, making
learning easy for beginners.
Modern
Swift is one such
wonderful language that comes with numerous modern aspects and the most
important aspect of the language is that it is easier to read and write than
Objective-C. On the web, you can check out the written that this doesn’t matter
as everything is simpler to comprehend once you have had enough experience in
it.
It is not as
easy as it sounds to understand the concepts already without getting tripped up
the reading code. You will also not have your programs crash as you forgot a
semicolon at the end of the line. Moreover, these are some of the minor things
once you get used to it as certainly, there are advantages that Swift brings to
the table for beginners.
Being the
modern language, Swift will lower the barrier to entry for many people, making
it simpler to focus on concepts than on extraneous syntax. To review, it is
essential to learn and comprehend the basics of programming that is the very
first step in your journey to learn iPhone development with Swift.
Safe & Secure
At the time of
launching Swift, Apple claimed three things, including safe, modern, and
powerful. All those who are newbie, modernity, and power of programming
language do not mean to them, they just care about the safety.
When you start
learning how to program, the hardest thing is not knowing what went wrong.
Indeed, there is a huge benefit from figuring that out yourself and learning
from it; however, the lack of right feedback can put some off.
Moreover, Swift
is one such language that can prevent a complete category of mistakes or errors
from arising and inform us iteratively of what we are performing wrong. Being a
safer and secure language, it will benefit you by ensuring that your code
writing experience will be less frustrating.
Still, Objective-C is Important
However, it
would be a quite big mistake not to learn Objective-C as there are several
reasons why you should learn Objective-C and why it is still important.
● As you know that there are enormous
projects that are written in Objective-C. However, there are various Objective-C
projects in the App Store compared to the Swift projects. Being a professional
iOS developer, you need to learn Objective-C to maintain these projects as it
doesn’t make sense to shift an Objective-C project to Swift.
● In Objective-C, there are lots of
libraries and frameworks. And, it is true that you wanted to use them and you
also want to adjust the code.
● Ultimately, Objective is still a
wonderful and advanced programming language.
Learning Both Swift & Objective-C
As Apple didn’t
launch a brand-new language just for the fun, so the launch of Swift is the
rapid iteration by the core team and the effort at increasing adoption in the
community all deliver a clear indication that Apple sees Swift as the future of
its platforms.
The company has
some of the big plans for Swift with work well underway for server side Swift
and usage in embedded systems. If you have decided to be the part of the iOS
community, Swift should be your primary development language.
Along with
Swift, Objective-C is still here and the company is making lots of efforts to
bring improvements to the language. Therefore, it is better you learn both and
make yourself aware of enormous possibilities.
If you are
looking for the help from professional iOS developers, you can get in touch with any trusted iPhone
app development company that will comprehend your needs and give a high-end solution.
Author Info:
Sohel Ather is a tech writer and a creative content expert with
one of the trusted mobile app
development companies, Space-O Technologies. Sohel likes to write on all
latest technology news and software.
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