New in Swift 3
The biggest feature in Swift 3 is syntax compatibility and stability. Apple is trying to refine its young, shifting language into its final foundational shape. Each successive update of Swift has introduced breaking syntax changes that made older code incompatible with the newest version of Swift; this is very inconvenient for developers. Going forward, Swift 3 aims to reach maturity and maintain source compatibility with future releases of the language. Swift 3 also features the following:
- A package manager that will help grow the ecosystem
- A more consistent, readable API and API guidelines that often result in less code for the same result
- Improved tooling and bug fixes in the IDE, Xcode
- Many small syntax improvements in consistency and clarity
Swift has already made tremendous steps forward as a powerful, young language. Now Apple is working on polishing Swift into a mature, production-ready tool. The overall developer experience improves with Swift 3.