Swift VS Objective-C, Who will bite the Apple?

Created in 2014 by Apple, Swift aimed to offer iOS developers an alternative solution to Objective-C which was until then the most used language in the development of iOS.

Swift is a programming language compiled for iOS, macOS and Linux. It has been designed to be compatible with all existing iOS development tools. Opposite him, Objective-C says the “patriarch”. But which of these languages ​​can both facilitate the daily life of developers and provide a profitable solution for businesses?

Through this article, Elitech Systems presents a comparison of these two iOS languages ​​and tries to find you the arguments for which you should use Swift instead of Objective-C in 2020.

Swift, the takeover

Created by one of the most influential technology companies in the world, Swift has established itself as the benchmark programming language for mobile development and has already surpassed Apple’s original development language, Objective-C.

When Swift was designed, it had to be easy to learn, and it had to promote an easier and faster development cycle for applications than Objective-C, which worked.

The popularity of Swift So has grown tremendously in recent years and today there are many great development tools that Apple has made available to work with Swift.

Swift is not based on the C language but emphasizes simpler coding, security and application performance. The language is intuitive, and therefore easier to learn for new programmers.

A great feature of Swift is its syntax. Especially compared to Objective-C since there is no need for semicolons, calls to oneself or parentheses around the if statements.

Today, Apple encourages the use of Swift and provides constant updates to language versions. The giant has also managed to bring the best customer experience to developers, who use Swift as their primary language for iOS development, giving them the opportunity to influence its future.

Finally, regular users can submit bug fixes and feature improvements and port it to platforms other than Mac and iOS.

Objective-C, the dinosaur

Objective-C is a highly dynamic object-oriented programming language. It offers developers the possibility to be more attentive to details, to better support objects and other languages ​​like C and C ++, allowing to use third-party libraries.

Created in the 1980s, it can work with earlier versions of iOS and macOS, which facilitates the creation of universal projects. Objective-C is still used in many companies today.

Developers who still use Objective-C have good reasons. Many of them are language experts and in this situation the benefits of Swift cannot outweigh the costs of learning the new language. These developers have already spent a lot of time learning it and developing apps for it.

However it is clear that Objective-C has a more complex code structure. It includes a large number of @ symbols, lines, semicolons and conditional parentheses with internal instructions “if” and “else” … Opinions on syntax, are one of the first things that pops up when you mention Objective-C.

Language is also prone to difficult debugging problems due to its dynamic nature.

So which one to choose? 

Swift can be considered as the future coding language of iOS, but Objective-C still has a bright future ahead of it as long as Apple supports it.

You have two choices for iOS development, if you plan to learn a new language quickly enough, it might be a good idea to opt for Swift, due to its readability and modern functionality adapted to current needs.

However, if you need more libraries and frameworks for your projects, Objective-C will be the best choice. This is why it is more widely used by advanced developers and programmers.

Swift remains the language you need to learn today. Currently most companies that offer job offers iOS, will have their application developed in Swift and not in Objective-C…

Swift was also developed by Apple to attract new programmers because it is similar to languages ​​such as Ruby and Python, so will allow the emergence of new “modern” developers.

Conclusion

While most of existing iOS apps are written in Objective-C, it’s time to think about moving them to Swift. When it comes to updates, Swift allows iOS developers to deal with any changes in a short period of time. All thanks to its more approachable and responsible nature. It’s not a surprise, that even Android programmers put an eye on Swift and already use it for Android development!