Objective-C Vs Swift – Which is best for iOS App Development?

Objective-C had been the primary development language for Apple products since the NeXT acquisition in 1996. However, Swift was announced at WWDC 2014 – a new language with major improvements and new features gave Objective C a solid competition.

Currently all Apple products are made with Objective-C. But thanks to expert iOS development companies like Viftech Solutions that are creating Apple applications, you don’t have to worry about compatibility; since it allows to work with Objective-C and Swift at the same time. If you already know how to program in Objective-C, you will find it very easy to learn to program in Swift. And if you’re new to iOS development, learning the latter will be easy.

Swift focuses on a Protocol Oriented Programming paradigm.  This means that it is a language that prefers the use of protocols, better known as interfaces, instead of classes. In this way we achieve a more flexible and modular code; in addition to solving problems such as the need to use a “super-class”.

Something very interesting about Swift is the handling of dynamic libraries. Previously, static libraries were only updated in newer versions. That is, in the transition from iOS7 to iOS8, for example. But now the libraries will constantly improve along with the language. Apple is investing in constantly improving Swift’s performance; and your applications can benefit from these improvements.

With Swift we can create much more reliable code. In Objective-C it is possible to create pointers without content, that is to say in null state (called nil in Objective-C); this may seem comfortable when creating your code, but it can cause bugs in our application that can be difficult to detect. In Swift all objects will always have a value.  If we want to leave the variable empty, it is assigned the value _nil; _because if it is left blank, the compiler will mark us an error and indicate the object that is empty. This is sure to save us a headache in the future.

Swift is the future of Apple, and eventually all of its products will be made using Swift. And Objective-C will be, one day, just a memory. If you are still wondering which language to learn first to develop for iOS, watchOS and / or OS X, the answer is Swift. And if you already program in Objective-C, learning it will be very easy and will allow you to work better and faster.

Swift is a new programming language that Apple introduced at the recent WWDC14, the conference it holds for developers each year. This new programming language will coexist for the time being with Objective-C, which is the language currently used for all iOS, OS X and GNUstep devices.

When Apple introduced Swift it assured that it was an interactive and fun code, with a concise and expressive syntax and that applications run much faster thanks to this new programming language, which is called to be the future in the world of computing. programming.

Objective-C, for its part, is Apple’s flagship language, or at least so far. It has a simple flow control statement, different fundamental data types, structures and pointers, implicit and explicit conversions between types, and is capable of doing everything you can imagine easily and quickly.

Since the arrival of Swift, much has been said about the pros and cons of such language and it seems that the pros clearly win out. However, many developers have complained about this new language, considering it even worse than Objective-C. That is why we wanted to compare this new language and Objective-C to assess which of the two is better in a totally objective way.

Which of The Two Languages ​​Has More Power?

The first aspect we want to analyze is the power of the language of each one and, although it hurts many, it seems quite clear that Swift would take a point in favor in that regard.

No one can doubt that the new Swift language is far ahead of Objective-C in terms of power and performance, as the language is much closer to hardware.

As you well know, Objective-C converts our code to binary and it is in this conversion process that the greater or lesser power of a language lies. Swift, on the other hand, is closer to the CPU, is more optimized and has a lower number of layers which, despite what some say, make it a much more powerful language than Objective-C, it does not fit doubt.

Ease & Greater Syntactic Understanding

In this regard, there is no doubt that the clear winner is Objective-C, why? Simply because it is easier to learn since it has a simpler structure. Even so, as we could see recently, a novice programmer was able to create a clone of Flappy Bird with Swift in 4 hours, which shows its great speed, although it is true that it is a stricter language, in the purest style script.

Thus, and despite the fact that the Objective-C language is more extensive and requires more lines of code, it is easier to understand and understand, so in this regard we would stick with the popular traditional language.

What Language Has A More Secure Code?

As you will remember, Apple suffered a serious security problem with an implementation of SSL certification. The real problem centered on an uncontrolled else that sneaked into a series of consecutive ifs.

The fact is that Objective-C does not require an if statement to be bounded with start and end braces, since it understands that the first statement assigned to the if is the one it has to execute. So the else statement got into the middle of the if string, causing it to get out of a wrong condition.

This with Swift would never have happened, since the new language has a sufficiently robust structure that requires meeting a series of requirements when working that guarantee greater safety. In addition, in case there is a serious error of this type, the language is able to alert you at compile time, instead of appearing at runtime, something that is appreciated.

Thus, in this aspect we would stay with the great security of Swift, since it is very strict and complex, and that is why, as we have already said in the previous point, it is more difficult to learn and handle, although it is worth it. make the effort.

Well, This Is All Very Good – But Which One Is Better?

Well, at this point, I think it’s been pretty clear that the new Swift programming language takes the cake in its great duel with the popular and traditional Objective-C. Swift is modern, powerful and very secure, which makes the new language a great alternative that is much more powerful than Objective-C, with only one drawback: its difficulty.

Swift is much more difficult to learn and handle since it has a much more complex syntax and a less syntactic language than Objective-C, although we reiterate that, far from being a disadvantage, it is worth making the effort to adapt to this new language since it offers us many more possibilities.

Even so, as we have been able to read in Apple Coding, it should be noted that Swift is a very recent language so it still needs a long way to go and still needs to reach a final version. Even so, if you are thinking of learning a programming language and you don’t know which one, we would advise you on the new language if you plan to launch a mobile application in a few months, or Objective-C if the launch is urgent.