While it’s true that the language is really only useful on just Apple platforms, it is still quite an amazing language. I have professionally used about half a dozen languages over the last many years, written hundreds of thousands of lines each in all those languages, and swift is a true breath of fresh air. It checks all the boxes for me, very concise and elegant to write, yet very strictly statically typed. A nice upgrade to OO programming with use of protocols, with strong encouragement to use functional programming here and there as well. Runs reasonably fast, on par with Go or Java. Overall just really nice ergonomics. named parameters and a wide variety of other seemingly minor syntactical characteristics act as a meaningful upgrade to make the overall process of writing code much more enjoyable for me.
The fact that Apple provides all these incredible platform specific frameworks and libraries for graphics, audio, games, GPU kernel programming, and more, it’s just the icing.
The fact that Apple provides all these incredible platform specific frameworks and libraries for graphics, audio, games, GPU kernel programming, and more, it’s just the icing.