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 Objecive-C, especially the modern syntax, Swift will feel familiar.

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

Some of the technologies I’ll cover in this book are:

  • Automatic reference ...

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