Comparing Swift And Objective-C Tutorials

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Since most of the readers and students of the course started their iOS development journey with Objective-C, I’m writing this article series to introduce the Swift programming language by showing Objective-C code snippets and their Swift equivalents.

In the next few articles, we’ll start comparing things like variables, classes, methods and properties between the two languages but in this first article, I’m going to introduce some broader differences that you’ll notice as you begin learning Swift with an Objective C background.

The name of the method in Swift doesn’t reflect its class- or instance-ness. Note that in the documentation, the Objective-C version is listed by the title. Following that, the Swift and Objective-C interfaces are shown (in that order). This pattern appears to be followed in all of the frameworks. Comparing declarations. Comparing Code: Swift and Objective-C 14-minute iOS Workshop Start Workshop. IOS; Intermediate; About this Workshop. Let's dissect how the same app can be built using Swift or Objective-C. We'll pick apart the syntactical differences as well as the some of the most common pitfalls in moving from one language to the other. Before arriving at Treehouse Gabe spent several. Apr 05, 2018  Apple released Swift as a replacement to Objective-C, but an iOS developer can work with Swift and Objective-C jointly for which he has to use Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks. However, if you are still in some dilemma whether to start using the Swift or not, the brief comparison between Objective-C and Swift will erase that confusion from mind.

Comparing Swift And Objective-C Tutorials

It’s important to remember that the Swift programming language is still under development which means that things can change.

With that said, here are some broad differences which struck me right away when I was learning Swift.

Comparing Swift And Objective-C Tutorials

Swift is much more type safe

I think this is what Apple meant when they said that Swift is less prone to errors because in Swift, things like arrays and dictionaries need to have a class type specified and they can then only accept objects of that type. In Objective-C, you were able to put a mixture of different object types into a collection like an array or dictionary.

Tutorials

This type checking in Swift makes it so that you can be confident that a collection will only contain objects of the specified type rather than having to check if the object is a certain class type before operating on it as you sometimes have to do with Objective-C.

The syntax is more natural and concise

While it’s a hassle to learn a new programming language, the syntax of Swift is actually easier to read and understand. That was my first impression while I was learning the Swift syntax.

Mix Objective C And Swift

Or maybe it’s just that Objective-C is very verbose.

For instance, to declare a variable, you’d write

var myVariable = 10
or
var myVariable = “some text”

Objective C Vs Swift

Which is a lot easier to understand for a non-programmer.

Similarly for defining the return type of a method, you use an arrow like this:

func myMethod -> Int
{
}

As you’ll see in the next few articles when we do some comparisons, Swift is a joy to read.

Comparing Swift And Objective-c Tutorials Pdf

No more semi colons

While it was natural for me to write semi-colons at the end of my statements because of other programming languages that did the same, I soon realized that non-programmers found it a hassle to remember to do so!

In Swift, you don’t end your statements with a semi colon; instead you start a new line.

No More Header and Implementation Files

In Swift, a class is pretty self contained and doesn’t require a separate header and implementation file.

Comparing Swift And Objective-c Tutorials For Beginners

It’s not particularly difficult to understand once it “clicks” for a beginner but I can recall many times when I helped people with the differences and reasoning behind having a .h and .m file and where to declare certain things.

Comparing Swift And Objective-c Tutorials Video

For Beginners

Objective C Call Swift

With my short time using Swift so far, I can see why Apple said that this programming language is more beginner friendly. I don’t have anything bad to say about it yet because I haven’t spent enough time with it nor have I actually built much with it. However, I’m keeping in mind that it’s still a work in progress and I’m optimistic for it catching on with developers.

Objective C Swift Bridge

Let’s move on to part 1 and explore the differences with variables, classes, methods and properties in Swift!