Chapter    1

Hello Swift

Swift is a new language designed by Apple for developing iOS and OS X applications. It takes the best parts of C and Objective-C and adapts them with modern features and patterns. Swift-compiled programs will run on iOS7 or newer and OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or newer.

The two main goals for the language are compatibility with the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks and safety, as you’ll see in the upcoming chapters. If you’ve been using Objective-C, especially the modern syntax, Swift will feel familiar.

However, Swift’s syntax is actually a major departure from Objective-C. It takes lots of cues from programming languages such as Haskell, C#, Ruby, and Python.

Some of the technologies we will cover in this book are the following: ...

Get Learn Swift 2 on the Mac, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.