Swift Introduction

Swift Introduction

Swift is a modern, fast, and safe language for building apps across Apple platforms and beyond.

What is Swift?

Swift is a modern, fast, and safe programming language created by Apple.

Use it to build apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

You can also run Swift on servers (Linux, Windows, macOS).

Swift helps you write correct and efficient code with type inference, optionals, value types, and protocol-oriented programming.

print("Hello, Swift!")

Why Use Swift?

Swift focuses on safety and speed.

Features like optionals, value types, and generics help you avoid bugs and keep code clear.

• Great for iPhone/iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV development
• Open source and available on multiple platforms
• Expressive syntax, optionals to model absence, and value types for predictable behavior
• Vibrant ecosystem and first-class tooling in Xcode

Swift History

A brief timeline of important Swift releases and milestones.

• 2014: Swift 1.0 announced at WWDC as a modern successor to Objective-C
• 2015: Swift became open source at swift.org, with Linux support
• 2019: Swift 5 introduced ABI stability on Apple platforms
• 2021: Swift 5.5 added structured concurrency (async/await, Task, actor)
• Today: Used across iOS, macOS, and server-side Swift

Mac and Xcode for iOS Development

If your goal is to build and run iOS apps, you should use a Mac with Xcode.

• Xcode includes iOS SDKs, simulators, Interface Builder, and signing tools.
• You can learn Swift on Windows or Linux and in the browser, but building and running iOS apps requires a Mac.
• To ship to TestFlight or the App Store, you need an Apple Developer account.

Get Started

When you are finished with this tutorial, you will be able to write basic Swift programs and understand core language features used in real apps.

No prior programming experience is required.