Apple just announced its new Swift programming language at WWDC, and has already published a free guide for developers looking to learn the language.
Swift is a new programming language for creating iOS and OS X apps. Swift builds on the best of C and Objective-C, without the constraints of C compatibility. Swift adopts safe programming patterns and adds modern features to make programming easier, more flexible, and more fun. Swift’s clean slate, backed by the mature and much-loved Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks, is an opportunity to reimagine how software development works.
This book provides:
– A tour of the language.
– A detailed guide delving into each language feature.
– A formal reference for the language.
You can grab the guide on iBooks right now.
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Just downloaded it, but the updated Xcode that supports it, is not available yet (21h20 CET)
Do anyone have any idea how can I try Swift out? The new SDK isn’t out yet, so are there any other solutions?
lol gimme gimme gimme :)
Link’s still broken. Localhost error. Though I get that on a link on AppleInsider, as well…
I’d like to learn thi leanguage but i can’t download xcode 6 and in xcode 5 i can’t start program i swift.
i need just xcode 6 to start programming for apple in swift.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SwiftProgramming/comments/274x7c/apples_swift_programming_language_guide/
SWIFT looks like a mix of C++ and Java on so many things. It has some features like C++ but using ARC there are no pointers and memory management is automatic like in Java, with the advantage that it’s not as slow as either Java or C# .NET .. if Apple claims are going to be true then it will be as fast C++ code (which is faster than Objective-C). Reading some of the pages on iBooks…
Anyway Apple just said that you can write SWIFT code along with Objective-C and C and mix everything.. however the current document lacks proper info on how anything is shared between Swift and Objective-C or C … and it fails to explain if existing Objective-C APIs could really be accessed from inside Swift directly..
Right now it seems like a language on its own.. I’d like Apple to add further info to explain how to mix code, what can be shared between languages, what limitations and so on…
Actually it’s VERY similar to Scala with some minor changes and extensions (which is awesome because Scala is very much designed to be as easy to use and expressive as possible). The reason why Scala is currently not used outside of education very much is because it is based on Java behind-the-scenes and often even slower. If Apple really made Swift as fast as native C++-code, this is definitely amazing, maybe the biggest game-changing announcement of the whole event.
I completely agree. This is big news.
Actually, Scala is used extensively outside of education. In fact stack overflow stats show that usage goes way up monday to friday and down on week-ends. Other languages like Haskell are the opposite. This indicates its being used by professionals not academics.
Swift is a huge leap way past Java and C# but unfortunately falls short of Scala. Many Scala features seem to be missing such as futures and promises, upper and lower bounds on types, co and contra variance, optional “.” for method calls and optional “()” for method parameters just to name a few I can think of.
Hopefully Apple will improve the language over time and add these features.
If they want to leap-frog Scala they could add “Dependent Object Types” before Scala does.
where can i download xcode 6 without developer program?? i wantend realy started programing for apple but learning objecive – c now is not good idea when we have swift
You can’t.
If you don’t know any programming language yet: Start learning any other language (e.g. Java as it’s quite nice to learn and has many tutorials) and Swift is ready for you in fall when you are able to use it efficiently.
If you already can program in another language: Take a look at Scala, which is not very useful in productive use but 90% the same language as Swift and moving will be really easy to you (I finished the iBooks-guide in less than an hour and would say that I’m already better at Swift than I was at Objective-C)
Not useful in production? You realize that twitter backend is written in Scala, also a lot of Linked In as of late. But I agree it look a hell lot like Scala.. Very exciting stuff
Here is an italian guida for swift programming language ! http://www.programmareinswift.it