Why the Swift programming language is needed by Apple and you. Swift

Swift programmer is a developer of applications on the iOS platform for mobile and desktop devices from Apple - Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Watch. The profession belongs to the IT field, is in demand as much as Apple products, salary in Russia is in the range of 100,000–300,000 (median value), the ability to work remotely, is available to men and women of any age with an interest in programming (take a test for a programmer), assumes a higher technical education, college, or self-study. The profession has its own. The profession is suitable for those who are interested in computer science (see choosing a profession for interest in school subjects).

Short description

The Swift programming language was created in 2014 to replace the deprecated Objective-C language and immediately became very popular among developers.

Swift was conceived as a language that is easier to read and more resistant to programmer errors, the developer company Apple is constantly developing it. Therefore, people with programming experience who want to create software products for iOS will learn Swift fairly quickly.

The popularity of Swift programmers is directly related to the popularity of Apple devices. Devices are expensive, software for them is available, as a rule, for people with a high level of income. Therefore, Swift programmers have a high salary.

Features of the profession

Swift developer is a promising profession, but programmers creating software for iOS and other popular operating systems must be distinguished by a technical mindset, creativity, and diversification, which are not taught in Swift courses. In the workplace, programmers can use both Objective-C and Swift, and it is better to have skills in working with each of these languages, which will help to achieve great success in their careers.

The Swift programmer must:

• create programs;
• to test programs;
• place created products in the store, analyze complaints and wishes of users who use the application;
• make corrections;
• create updates, instructions;
• be able to estimate the budget and your time;

Employers are interested in hiring experienced programmers, since, as a rule, they do not have the means to teach programming. Therefore, a beginner should consider taking Swift programming courses.

The developer must be able to resolve controversial issues, look for optimal solutions to meet customer requirements, accept criticism without offense, work for the result, and not for the sake of profit. Knowledge of a foreign language, skills of working with Apple devices are important.

Pros and cons of the profession

pros

1. The Swift language is a modern, popular and promising language.
2. Many vacancies
3. Constant intellectual development.
4. Prestigious profession.
5. Lots of educational literature in Russian.
6. There are career opportunities.
7. Working with real professionals who are also passionate about their work.
8. High salary if the programmer works in the company.

Minuses

1. Often, nervous work
2. Programmers move a little
3. Continuous self-learning is needed

Important Personal Qualities

1. Discipline.
2. The ability to control yourself.
3. Honesty.
4. Punctuality.
5. Responsibility.
6. Strategic and logical thinking.
7. The makings of a leader.
8. The ability to feel people.
9. Good memory.

Training for a Swift programmer, Swift programming courses

Swift is the programming language that developers have been waiting for for a long time. Its entry into the big market made a splash, and Apple released a tutorial book with the introduction of Swift. The tutorial will help programmers who have previously worked with Objective-C to master the language. The book is distributed free of charge, you can download it from the iTunes Store, but the fact is that it is written in English. There is no official translation yet, but on the Internet you can find books created by experienced programmers. Such materials are based on the personal experience of developers and translated technical documentation.

If you have not worked with Objective-C before, but know Java or C++ and want to become a great programmer, then you should start attending Swift programming courses for developers. During the training, the student will gain knowledge not only about Swift, but also about Objective-C, learn about the stages of developing applications for iOS devices. You can choose from highly focused Swift programming courses, as well as general-purpose courses for iOS developers.

Swift Programming Courses

Courses from T&P (theoryandpractice.ru)

Students study for 51 days, they will learn how development is done, download applications in the App Store, learn the programming languages ​​necessary for an iOS developer, incl. the Swift language. Experienced programmers, managers, web designers, people who are thinking about their own startup are invited to the training.

Training center "Specialist" at MSTU. N. E. Bauman

Various lectures, programming courses, webinars are constantly held here, which are aimed at learning the popular Swift language. Students can choose the format of study and the program that will suit their preparation.

Place of work

The mobile development market is always in need of talented Swift programmers, so they can work in any field:

• private and state companies (cleaning, logistics, construction, products and others);
• business and finance;
• own startups;
• IT companies;
• online shopping.

A practicing developer will be able to work as a teacher, deal with students privately, which will bring him a stable income.

Swift programmer salary

The salary of Swift programmers does not depend on the region of residence or age. Experience is important, the number of programming languages ​​that the developer owns, the level of knowledge of the English language and the availability of projects hosted in the App Store.

Salary as of 04.03.2019

Russia 50000—200000 ₽

Moscow 60000—200000 ₽

Professional knowledge

The developer must know the Swift programming language and a foreign language. Experience of practical work with Objective-C, App Store, iTunes Connect and Apple Developer Program, knowledge of UX/UI, Cocoa, CALayer, NSNotificationCenter, JSON/XML, Design Patterns, Core Data, SQL, SDK is essential. Employers often put forward other requirements: knowledge of an additional language (Java, JavaScript, etc.), applications hosted in the App Store, and much more. Of course, a programmer must be able to work with all Apple products (iPod, iPhone, etc.).

Technologies are constantly changing and improving, so it is necessary to track these changes, study new disciplines, discover modern trends, because only in this way can a Swift programmer become a real professional.

Useful materials

1. Russian-language documentation: swiftbook.ru/doc.
2. Developer forum: cyberforum.ru/swift .
3. The official tutorial from Apple.

A selection of courses, websites, and mailing lists to help you master Swift within a month.

I started learning Swift exactly 30 days ago. Three days ago my app was approved by Apple for beta testing. It is clear that the beta is far from ideal, but for me it was a great achievement.

I don't have a computer science degree or developer experience, but for the last 5 years I've been a product manager on a software development team writing Ruby on Rails applications for fun. I wanted to be closer to the things I work with, so I started coding.

Why did I choose iOS and Swift?

Constant growth in the popularity of mobile applications

I wanted to work on what people need, and I have always liked the closeness of users to smartphones. Our devices know everything about us: when we wake up and when we go to bed, where we are and how we got there, our schedule, our relationship with friends and family, and much more that even the user himself does not know. I like it. Also, I've been an Apple fan for a long time, so it was natural to start with iOS. For a while I dealt with Objective-C, I didn’t like it, and I decided to learn Swift.

Restrictions are good

Application development within the framework set by Apple is quite accessible to a beginner and does not greatly limit the possibilities. But I was not tempted to be distracted by anything else and forced me to think more about UX.

Swift is a fast growing language.

I like to be at the origin, grow and develop together, for this reason I prefer to work in startups. So here, Swift is not yet so popular, and I like to be together with a community of like-minded people.

Beginner Resources

When I started learning, I had an idea for a simple application. It helped me stay motivated and learn the basics step by step.

I spent a lot of time looking for good resources, tutorials and online courses. I found a lot of cool things for beginners, for those who have not seen a single line of code, and decided that this would be too slow. At the same time, technical articles and reference materials (including from Apple) turned out to be designed for more experienced developers.

In the end, I found a happy medium, below are the materials that I found the most useful:

1. Paul Hegarty's Stanford course "Developing Swift Apps for iOS 8".

Available for free on iTunes U (including Windows). It took me about a week to watch the first five lectures and do my homework. In the process of learning, I encountered difficulties, and I had to move to other resources. However, I plan to continue my studies soon. And this site will help you figure out what you don't understand.

2. Course from the HSE "Development of iOS applications in the Swift language".

The course is based on the book Swift: Programming Language. For training, you will need development experience in any programming language (at least at the basic level). In general, the course provides a good preparation for starting work on your applications.

3. RayWenderlich.com

No, this is not someone's personal site. It's the best I've ever found. If you are just starting out, I advise you to subscribe to the newsletter and use the tutorial posted on the site. Thanks to him, I first learned about strange things and found how to deal with them. After reading, start looking for ideas. If it doesn't work, google it.

My time plan

Week 1. I immersed myself in the lectures and assignments of the Stanford course while reading the book on which the HSE course was based and studying the resources of RayWenderlich.com. At the end of the first week, I decided that I was ready to start working on the application.

Weeks 2 and 3. At this time I went on a short trip, I had no internet access on the way, and I downloaded more than 40 tabs in advance. This gave me the opportunity to work on the application without distractions. Every day I thought about how to make it better.

Week 4. I continued to clean up unnecessary code, draw a logo in Sketch, and prepare the application for submission to Apple for review. I received a response in less than a day.

I spent 15 hours working in Xcode, 3 hours in the iOS emulator, over 4 hours reading tutorials, and about an hour searching for answers on Stack Overflow. I spent a lot of time studying materials using a smartphone (I did not count this time).

Apple at the opening of the WWDC 2015 developer conference introduced updates to its key platforms iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. But for developers, one of the most important announcements was the second version of the programming language. Craig Federighi said during the presentation of the product that Apple tried to create a language that would be spared from the cumbersome legacy of Objective-C. Swift was built into the NeXt platform, which became the basis for OS X and later iOS.

Swift is a really convenient and powerful language that claims not only to replace Objective-C in the Apple ecosystem, but also to encroach on the entire C family as a whole. Blogger Anton Mukhataev, who studies several programming languages, five benefits of Apple Swift for novice users. Among them are easy-to-read syntax, understandable constructs, security, and the lack of experienced Swift programmers.

1. There are still no truly experienced Swift developers

Everyone has to learn and relearn without exception. If you start Swift in 2015, then after any number of years you will lag behind the most experienced programmers, at worst, by a year. Experienced coders only benefit from the fact that Swift borrows the best elements of other languages ​​- it's easier for those who know them to master it.

2. It's a young programming language

In new versions of Swift, there are still fundamental changes in syntax and data types. The language is maturing before our eyes, and it is easier to understand the logic of changes - and if you wish, you can help to refine it. Of course, some might call this a disadvantage, given that projects written in older versions of Swift don't work in new ones - but the migration doesn't take that long, and the syntax only gets easier.

3. It's a safe programming language

Swift is based on the desire to leave as few vulnerabilities as possible and to protect the code from errors as much as possible. The programmer is not obliged to keep everything in his head and follow everything. This is necessary in C-like languages, and if earlier it was justified, because they worked faster than others, then Swift is catching up in performance even with C ++ - and the further, the better it will be optimized. A programmer who writes code in Swift is deprived of a huge amount of headaches associated with memory management and other things.

4. Easy to read syntax inspired by Python and Ruby.

Swift is an easy to read language, just like Python. The main difference is that the blocks are separated not by indents, but by curly braces - this is more familiar and convenient.

5. Apple Open Source Swift

Apple announced at WWDC 2015 that by the end of the year, Swift will be . This means not only that in its refinement, Apple will rely even more strongly on the developer community, but also that it will potentially become truly multi-platform, and not be limited to the Apple ecosystem. In other words, if you are developing an application in Swift for iOS, then there is the prospect that you can port it to Android without having to learn the Java used by Google's operating system.

Finally, it is a beautiful language. Very subjective, of course, but the Swift code looks beautiful - which cannot be said about the same Objective-C with its endless heaps. And most importantly, beauty and convenience do not affect power.

Programming language guide in iTunes, information about the language is also on the company's website for developers.

As has been repeatedly noted, including, the conference was excellent, even if no hardware was presented at it. The software products alone were enough. About how much the public liked the conference, says at least the fact that after it there was no noticeable, traditional for such cases.

And while most of what was presented was quite expected by the public, the programming language turned out to be a real surprise. After all, no one even suspected that Apple was working in this direction. However, the programming language is not the iPad, developments of this type are of little interest to the general public. So, it was much easier to maintain secrecy.

most secret project

In fact, work on Swift began back in 2010, after the presentation of the iPad. The company wanted to create a simple, convenient and functional tool that could make life as easy as possible for developers.

The work was carried out in the strictest confidence. Moreover, for quite a long time only one person worked on the project - Chris Lattner, director of the Developer Tools department. Of course, later the staff had to be expanded. But still, the number of these people was never large enough. Few people knew about the development of a new language even within the walls of Apple itself, although by 2013 it was listed as the most important Developer Tools project. It is important to note that the company wanted to present the finished product immediately, avoiding all kinds of beta versions. Therefore, the work was extended until 2014.

Here it would be appropriate to tell a little about Lattner himself. He joined Apple in 2005, before that he worked for the benefit of the LLVM project at the University of Illinois, being one of the leading developers.

LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) is a low-level virtual machine, a universal system for transformation, optimization and analysis of programs. The project began as an independent project, but subsequently received significant outside support. Including from Apple itself, which then actively used LLVM in its own projects, including OS X and iOS. The same Metal was developed using this system.

Not without LLVM in the case of Swift. With the help of this system, the language is compiled into machine code, optimized in such a way as to get the maximum benefit when using an application on Apple technology.

At one time, the transition of Chris Lattner to Apple was more than a logical step. No less logical was the decision to entrust the development of a new language to him. It's still too early to make a final verdict, but it seems that he coped with the task perfectly.

Features of Swift

The brainchild of the latest advances, the compiled object-oriented programming language Swift draws on languages ​​such as Objective-C and C, bringing together the best of them. There are no restrictions in terms of compatibility, languages ​​can coexist perfectly in the same application. The latter, by the way, is very important, since there are already a huge number of programs written in Objective-C.

Interestingly, the vague idea of ​​Swift dates back to the NeXT days, when Objective-C had just begun to be developed. Then the idea was born to create a language that could make the programming process easier and more fun. But, as you can see, it took a lot of time to implement this idea.

In fact, it is not so easy to find the line when the code is simple enough to type, but at the same time readable enough so that a third-party developer can figure out pieces of someone else's program without comment. For example, a program written in Pascal is easy to understand, but the code is too long. PERL allows you to write everything in a few lines, but it is extremely unreadable code.

Meanwhile, some developers who have already tried Swift in practice claim that Apple managed to get as close to the ideal as possible, to find the very golden mean between readability and ease of typing.

As it immediately becomes clear from the name of the new language ( "swift" - English. "quick, swift"), the main emphasis in its creation was on speed. In particular, it is stated that a Swift program will run 1.3 times faster than a similar one written in Objective-C.

Also, when developing Swift, such important parameters as simplicity, security, and flexibility were taken into account. This language eliminates entire classes of unsafe code and is capable of automatic memory management. Swift eliminates the very possibility of making a number of mistakes that are so common among novice programmers. As for simplicity, it is well confirmed by the fact that within 24 hours from the moment it is already on it.

The creators have put a lot of effort into making Swift code more expressive and easier to understand. The developer can immediately track the results of his creativity by viewing individual parts of the code in the so-called. "interactive playgrounds" (Interactive Playgrounds). If it takes a lot of time to execute the code, then the process can be monitored on the reverse report line that appears specially for this. After the code has been improved, and the algorithm has been brought to mind, the developer simply moves it to his project. "Playgrounds" can be useful not only in terms of simplifying the development procedure, but also for honing your skills in using Swift.

A traditional "Hello, World" application looks like this in Swift:

println("Hello world")

And here is another example of simple code:

let apples = 3
let oranges = 5
let appleSummary = "I have \(apples) apples."
let fruitSummary = "I have \(apples + oranges) pieces of fruit."

Criticism of Swift

Meanwhile, frankly negative opinions regarding Swift are also appearing on the Web. There are concerns that this is a dead end development path and Swift will never be able to become popular. After all, even before that there were many programming languages ​​that were created specifically to make life easier for programmers and simplify the learning process. And not one of them has completely coped with the tasks assigned to him. All that their creators managed to achieve was simply to increase the already considerable number of programming languages.

There is criticism of Apple's actions, which "would be better to develop languages ​​like Python or Ruby, instead of creating another one." Such words are supported by the opinion that these tools are already actively used by developers from all over the world. I also happened to find an opinion according to which Apple in vain makes the main bet on speed. Like, with modern levels of development of iron, this is not so important.

But the most annoying thing is the fact (however, as always in such cases) that Apple created something only for itself, according to its own standards and on its own foundations. Moreover, it is stated that although Swift is not too different from many other languages, the company reiterates the creation of a fundamentally new product.

Instead of an afterword

You can criticize Apple for being too closed and overconfident. One can admire the simplicity of Swift and the cleanliness of its code. But the fact remains - the future of the new programming language is still unclear. And two development scenarios are possible.

Scenario one. Swift continues to be just an interesting development. It is used, but not too actively, preferring to continue working with the proven and familiar Objective-C. Developers for other platforms do not notice the appearance of a new language at all.

Scenario two. Swift approaches are becoming the norm in the programming world. Apple again manages to influence the whole world by changing the norms generally accepted among developers. The idea of ​​"playgrounds", coupled with the transparency of the code of the new language, may well make a real revolution in the study of programming. And this will allow us to completely revise the entire education process and provoke the emergence of a new generation of programmers.

By the way, I won’t be surprised if in a few years, having carefully “polished” Swift, bringing it to perfection, Apple declares that it intends to abandon Objective-C altogether and rely on a new language.

I have been using Apple technology since the “classic era”, since 1995. During this period, I found more than one sudden and significant (and sometimes frankly shocking) "revolution" in the development of the company. Which, in spite of everything, has not lost its charm. I believe that this will continue to be the case.

, watchOS , tvOS , Linux

Swift- (pronounced [swɪft]) is a multi-paradigm object-oriented programming language created by Apple for iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS developers. Swift works with the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks and is compatible with Apple's core Objective-C codebase.

Story

On June 8, 2015, Apple announced the release of a new version of Swift 2.0, which received faster performance, a new error handling API, language syntax improvements, and a feature to check the availability of Swift features for target OS. New improved compiler and standard libraries will be released for OS X, iOS and Linux operating systems and will become Open Source

Description

Swift takes quite a lot from Objective-C , however it is not defined by pointers, but by the types of variables that the compiler handles. Many scripting languages ​​work on a similar principle. At the same time, it provides developers with many features that were previously available in C++ and Java, such as definable naming conventions, so-called generics, and operator overloading.

Some of the language's functions are faster than other similar languages. For example, sorting complex objects is 3.9 times faster than Python and almost 1.5 times faster than Objective-C.

Code written in Swift can work alongside code written in , C++, and Objective-C within the same project.

Types, variables, scopes

An example of code that performs the concatenation of 2 strings.

var str = "hello," str += "world"

Swift supports 3 access levels: public, internal, and private.

Optional Types and Call Chains

An important feature in Swift is optional types, which allow references and values ​​to be treated in a fashion similar to , in which a pointer can refer to a value or be null. This means that non-optional types cannot throw a "pointer to null" error, as the compiler removes that possibility.

The essence of the call chain is to call several related methods. For example:

let aTenant = aBuilding . TenantList [ 5 ] let theirLease = aTenant . leaseDetails let leaseStart = theirLease . startDate

Can be shortened:

let leaseStart = aBuilding. TenantList[5]? . leaseDetails? . startDate

Value types

Unlike most object-oriented languages, Swift offers built-in support for passing data, both by reference and by value. In the case of a reference, classes are used; in the case of a value, structures are used. At the same time, the structures have all the same software mechanisms, such as methods, protocol implementations. However, structs do not allow inheritance.

The programmer is free to choose either of these two semantics when implementing data structures. For example, when choosing large structures, the programmer can implement them as classes. And small data structures (for example, a 2D point) can be implemented as a structure passed by value, thus obtaining data without passing by a pointer. The advantage of Swift is that by default it passes data types like Int and Double by value, and data types like String and Array by reference. This approach can provide a significant performance gain for applications.

Protocol-oriented programming

Swift uses protocols that are generically known as interfaces.

For example, you can declare the SupportsToString protocol, which will ensure that objects conforming to this protocol will implement the toString method. The protocol code will look like:

protocol SupportsToString ( func toString() -> String )

Now we can implement this protocol with respect to the String class without access to the base class:

extension String : SupportsToString ( func toString () -> String ( return self ) )

Libraries, development and execution

Swift uses the same runtime as Objective-C but requires iOS 7 / OS X 10.9 or higher. Swift code can be used alongside Objective-C code, and with both C and C++ extensions.

To help developers when reusing existing code, Xcode 6 offers a semi-automated system that binds "bridging header" header files to give Swift code access to Objective-C code.

Memory management

Swift uses automatic reference counting (ARC) for memory management. Apple required manual control when using Objective-C, however, introduced in 2011, APS provided easier memory allocation and cleanup.

Debugging and more

A key element of the Swift system is the ability to explicitly debug and execute code using the development environment using the Read-eval-print loop (REPL) principle. According to this principle, the user enters an expression (read), the system evaluates it (eval) and displays it to the user (print), and then everything repeats (loop). Thus, the REPL operates according to the "sandbox" principle. Sandboxes are interactive views that run in the Xcode environment that respond to requests on the fly. If the query times out relative to the current query, then a graph can be used to show the result.

Similarities to C

• Most operators in Swift come from C, despite a few new ones.
• Curly braces group expressions.
• Variables are assigned a value by an equals sign and compared by a double equals sign. The new operator === checks if 2 references point to the same object.
• The for, while, if, switch statements are used in a similar way, but new statements like for in only iterate over collections, while switch can take non-integer values.

Similarities to Objective-C

• Basic numeric types (Int, UInt, Float, Double).
• Square brackets are used in arrays to both declare and retrieve an element by index.
• Class methods are inherited like instance methods. The self reference in class methods points to the class in which the method was called.

Differences from Objective-C

• Expressions do not need a terminating character (;), although they are needed when writing multiple expressions on the same line.
• No need for header files.
• Using type inference.
• Generalized programming.
• Functions are first class objects.
• The item enumeration may include an algebraic data type.
• Operators can be redefined for classes, and new operators can also be created.
• Strings fully support Unicode. Most Unicode characters can be used in identifiers and operators.
• Prior to Swift 2.0, there was no exception handling (although it could be emulated with closures).
• The behavior of several known potential bugs has been changed:
  • Pointers are not public by default. The programmer does not need to keep track and mark the names to link or follow the link.
  • Assignments do not return values. This prevents the known error of writing i=0 instead of i == 0 when compiling.
  • No need to use break at the end of switch blocks. In general, there is no transition to the next block, except when using fallthrough .
  • Variables and constants are always initialized and array bounds are always checked.
  • Integer overflows that cause undefined behavior are tracked at runtime in Swift. The programmer can resolve overflow using the &+ , &- , &* , &/ , or &% operators. The min and max properties are defined for all types and can be used to test for potential overflows instead of using constants from external libraries.

Code example

// this is a single line comment using two slashes. /* this is also a comment, but written over multiple lines */ /* multiline comments /* can be nested! */ Therefore you can block out code containing multiline comments */ // Swift variables are declared with "var" // this is followed by a name, a type, and a value var explicitDouble : Double = 70 // If the type is omitted, Swift will infer it from // the variable's initial value var implicitInteger = 70 var implicitDouble = 70.0 var 國 = "美國" // Swift constants are declared with "let" // followed by a name, a type, and a value let numberOfBananas : Int = 10 // Like variables, if the type of a constant is omitted, // Swift will infer it from the constant"s value let numberOfApples = 3 let numberOfOranges = 5 // Values ​​of variables and constants can both be // interpolated in strings as follows let appleSummary = "I have \(numberOfApples) apples." let fruitSummary = "I have \(numberOfApples + numberOfOranges) pieces of fruit." // In "playgrounds", code can be placed in the global scope print ("Hello, world" ) // This is an array variable var fruits = [ "mango" , "kiwi" , "avocado" ] // Example of an if statement; .isEmpty, .count if fruits . isEmpty ( print ("No fruits in my array." ) ) else ( print ( "There are \(fruits.count) items in my array") } // Define a dictionary with four items: // Each item has a person"s name and age let people = [ "Anna" : 67 , "Beto" : 8 , "Jack" : 33 , "Sam" : 25 ] // Now we use Swift's flexible enumerator system // to extract both values ​​in a single loop for (name , age ) in people ( print ( "\(name) is \(age) years old.") } // Functions and methods are both declared with the // "func" syntax, and the return type is specified with -> func sayHello (personName : String ) -> String ( let greeting = "Hello, \(personName)!" return greeting ) // prints "Hello, Dilan!" print(sayHello("Dilan")) // Parameter names can be made external and required// for calling. // The external name can be the same as the parameter // name by prefixing with an octothorpe (#) // - or it can be defined separately. func sayAge(#personName: String, personAge age: Int) -> String ( let result = "\(personName) is \(age) years old." return result ) // We can also specify the name of the parameter print(sayAge(personName: "Dilan", personAge: 42))