We define them using the var keyword: var name = 'Roger'

Variables let us assign a value to a label. Note: You can get a PDF and ePub version of this Swift Beginner's Handbook It also contains a series of awesome examples and tutorials to expand your Swift and iOS knowledge. It's a very handy way to test your code, not just when you start learning, but whenever you need to try some code. This app lets you run snippets of Swift code without having to create a full app first. If you have a Mac or an iPad, I recommend you to download the Playgrounds application made by Apple from the App Store. The goal of this book is to get you up and running with Swift, starting from zero. Swift is a general-purpose language, built with modern concepts, and it has a bright future. It is open source, so porting the language to other platforms does not require any permission or licensing, and you can find Swift projects to create Web servers and APIs ( ) as well as projects to interact with microcontrollers. You can use it on several other platforms. Swift is famously Apple's products language, but it is not an Apple-only language.

In just 6 years, Swift has gone through 5 major versions, and we're now (at the time of writing) at version 5. That said, I am not going to cover Objective-C here, because we're focusing on Swift – the present and future of the Apple platform. This does not mean Objective-C is dead or not worth learning: Objective-C is still an essential tool for any Apple developer. But in the recent years this effort has decreased a lot in favor of Swift development. While Objective-C will be used for years to maintain and improve existing apps, new applications are likely going to be created with Swift.īefore Apple introduced Swift, Objective-C was heavily developed to introduce new capabilities and features. But Swift usage is gaining traction year after year. Most of the software running on the iPhone and Mac today is based on Objective-C code, even for official Apple apps. Swift is a modern programming language that was designed to 'fit' in an ecosystem that was previously designed for a different programming language called Objective-C. Swift's compiler is LLVM, and it is included within Xcode, the standard IDE you use for Apple software development.

If there is a mismatch, the program will not compile. The type of a value is always checked when used as an argument or returned, at compile time. Swift is an open source, general purpose, compiled programming language that's statically typed.Įvery value has a type assigned.

It's the official language that works with the whole Apple Operating Systems lineup: iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS. The Swift programming language was created by Apple in 2014.

Swift code mac