Chapter 3. Introduction to Swift 3

For a long time, developing applications on an Apple platform meant you had to know how to use Objective-C. It is a quirky language, but it has adapted over the years to be a powerful tool for application development and was tied to the core of the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks.

As everyone knows by now, Apple changed the game in 2014 when they introduced Swift, an entirely new and modern language meant to carry app development into the next few decades.

Looking back, it's easy to see why a new language was necessary. Swift cleaned up a lot of long-standing problems with Objective-C, and has enabled Apple to really blow open their development platforms. Since Swift launched in 2014, we've seen a huge addition of functionality to iOS, and two entirely new development platforms with watchOS and tvOS. It is clear: Swift is here to stay.

In this chapter, we'll be getting through as many of the big, important features of Swift as we...