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Swift vs Objective C: Overview
In the world of computing, there are different evolutions that take place. These evolutions solve the problems and issues faced by the IT computing world. The problems that were faced due to the usage of other older more mature languages is something that is dealt with when you use the newer languages. Before Apple introduced Swift as its primary language for the development of iOS apps and software, Apple relied on its age-old language Objective C to develop apps and software on its trusted iOS platform for the Apple ecosystem.
In this article, we will enlist and enlighten on why Swift is faster than Objective-C and whether you should use it for any kind of iOS development.
Newer features and functionalities
Comparatively Swift is very much younger than objective C as it was introduced in 2015, the development of a newer language to become the successor of the age-old language Objective C started its development way back in 2010. Four years later, it was officially announced and launched that Apple will be making Swift as its de-facto development language for IOS development. Swift has also been designed to be made compatible with Linux and developers can use it without any hefty licensing fees or money being paid to use the language for iOS development.
Swift is a much more modern language that comes with a simplified syntax and also has concise concepts for beginners and newbies to understand and implement in their applications. Swift also supports the use of an IDE that is an integrated development environment to develop different kinds of applications that suit the customer’s requirements when it comes to iOS app development.
Speed and Performance
When the question is about choosing a particular language in which you will be doing full-fledged development, it comes to speed of execution and compilation that matters the most. The speed of the app depends on the speed of execution of the language that determines the overall performance of the app. It has been stated by Apple that Swift is actually faster and has high performance when it comes to raw execution speed, and this has been proved by Apple in their recent benchmarking programs. It showed that swift is about 2.6 times faster than objective C both at compile-time and execution time. This makes it apt and suitable for any kind of app development The implementation as well as the usage of higher-order functions as well as the concept of generics makes it much more easier and suitable for having the code to be reused and it also makes the code much cleaner. The concepts of type inference, as well as options, thus enable the programmers and developers to ensure that the codes are much safer as they are being transferred from the compilation to the execution by the programmer and swift developer.
Not only this but the syntax of the swift language has been designed from the ground up to be highly concise as well as readable as the developers do not require to make two separate or different code blocks for the implementation as well as the class interface.
More Cleaner and Efficient Code
As a developer or a programmer, if you have any experience using Objective C as your primary driver for developing iOS apps, you will notice that you do not need to write lengthy or complex code blocks when using Swift as it happens when using Objective C. The same task can be accomplished in much leaner and smaller code as directly compared to objective C, and that too using efficient and cleaner as well as readable code that other developers can understand. This is especially important and true when you are working in a team, you need to understand that your code will be read by your teammates and need to work on different aspects of the app development.
Maintenance
As we have already mentioned that you do not need to write code for two separate blocks or files, maintenance activities become a breeze when it comes to performing the actions on code maintenance when using Swift. This is a big plus when you have multiple application files to look after and implement the newer features and functionalities very quickly and easily. Objective C on the other hand leads to complex and lengthy code that can become a maintenance nightmare for developers.
Security
Swift has been designed to be memory safe and a type-safe language and this can be easily relied upon when compared to Objective C. Clear code can be designed using the features of Swift and this makes the code easily readable when compared to Objective C.
Conclusion:
So you see that with the number of features that Apple has to offer through its Swift language, it comes without any doubt that Swift is a faster and more efficient way to program iOS apps for the Apple ecosystem.