swift

Swift is a general-purpose, compiled programming language developed by Apple Inc. for building software on Apple platforms, including iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, as well as on other platforms. Announced by Apple in 2014 as a successor to Objective-C, Swift was designed to be safe, fast, and expressive, with a modern syntax that emphasizes readability and maintainability.

Swift supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented, functional, and protocol-oriented programming. It features type inference, optionals to handle missing values safely, closures, and powerful error handling. Memory management is performed through Automatic Reference Counting, providing automatic lifecycle management without a garbage collector. It also emphasizes safety with strong typing and runtime checks, and it includes generics and protocol extensions to enable flexible, reusable code.

Interoperability with Objective-C is a core design goal, enabling gradual migration of existing Cocoa and Cocoa Touch code bases while allowing new Swift modules to coexist with legacy code. The language emphasizes portability and performance, compiling to native binaries and taking advantage of LLVM optimization.

Swift was initially released as closed source, then open sourced in 2015 under a dual licensing model (Apache License 2.0 with a Swift License). Development is coordinated by Swift.org, with contributions from Apple and the broader community on GitHub. It runs on Apple platforms, and official support extends to Linux through community-supported builds.

Xcode provides the primary integrated development environment for Swift, and the Swift Package Manager supports distributing libraries and applications. The language has also gained traction for server-side development with frameworks such as Vapor, and it continues to evolve through ongoing updates focused on performance, safety, and tooling improvements.