Swift, a little history

In 2014, Apple shocked every Apple developer when it announced a new programming language. Swift!. Swift was an easy but strong programming language that was built to be as powerful as C, but without all the baggage of C. The idea of Swift is a type of safe, light but strong programming language that makes it easier for Senior developers as well as novice developers. to program for Apple platforms.

Swift distinguishes itself by, among other things, the following

• It is fast and powerful
• Type Safety
• Open Source
• Interoperability with Objective-C
• Modern and readable Syntax

More uses for Swift

Web and API Development

As mentioned, Swift is mainly used for developing Apple platform-specific applications. But there is another specific platform that Swift also works great on. And that is Linux. The open source aspect of Swift, called SwiftNIO. SwiftNIO can be used, among other things, to write Web applications and RESTAPIs that then work on Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and even Amazon Linux.

Game development

Something that is not very common but is very cool is the development of games with Swift. Apple has several strong and extensive frameworks that make it possible to develop 2D and 3D graphic games. These frameworks include SpriteKit, SceneKit, Metal and even ARKIT.

Android development

And last but not least. We can also build Android applications with Swift. There is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) called SCADE. With SCADE it is possible to build Android applications using Swift. There is a caveat to be placed here. SCADE has been in Alpha for years and there are few to no developers actively using it.

Conclusion

As you can see, Swift is a strong, widely used and, above all, diverse programming language that can be used in almost any direction. Whether you want to build applications for Apple platforms, develop your own games or even build your own APIs and databases. With Swift you can do almost anything. In the next articles in this guide, we will take a deeper look into Swift, learn how Swift works, what the syntax looks like and how we can use Swift for functional programming. After following this guide you will have a complete basic understanding of Swift and you will be able to write your own Swift code.

Disclaimer: I recommend that you don't only read our guides and articles but also do what is in the articles. Because reading and doing makes it easier to learn Swift and programming in general.