Swift is a robust and intuitive programming language created by Apple for building apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. It’s designed to give developers more freedom than ever. Swift is easy to use and open source, so anyone with an idea can create something incredible. – Apple
Apple, the tech giant, has never ceased to amaze. One of its superior creations – the Swift programming language has a strong global popularity and is a developer’s delight. Swift has been coming up with interesting and innovative versions, one after the other. Here comes the latest – Swift 5.2, which promises a lot of interesting updates, which will keep the developers and enterprises happy and curious.
Apple’s latest Swift release 5.2 has arrived with the release of Xcode 11.4, which is the latest version of Apple’s IDE. It showcases some prominent language changes along with reduced size of code and usage of memory, including a novel diagnostic architecture to handle errors in a better way.
Before we plunge into what version 5.2 has got along, here is a brief overview on Swift.
History
- Developed by Apple Inc.
- Announced at Apple’s WWDC 2014
- Swift 5.1 officially released in September 2019
- SwiftUI – framework for UI design, announced at Apple’s WWDC 2019
- Swift 5.2 – Latest stable release in March 2020
- Endorsed by the existing Cocoa framework
Key Features
- Open source, safe, fast, expressive
- Easy to read and write code
- Supports inferred types, making it less error prone
- Automatic memory management
- Complete compatibility with Objective-C
- Highly optimized compiler to enhance performance
- Type safe language and supports playground
- Safer design approach
Key Updates And Offerings of Swift 5.2
-
Effective Incremental Builds
To lessen the waste of work by Incremental mode builds, the new compiler offers a newer central logic to cache, evaluate and build dependency tracking between requests. This new logic is leveraged by the compiler to resolve declarations with ease and their references to each other. Earlier, the information computation wasn’t that useful, and validation wasn’t possible. Now, the representation of declarations is unchangeable, and the code generation of the compiler can trigger request evaluation. This improves accuracy and resolves multiple problems related to appropriateness.
-
Swifter Completion Of Code
Avoiding the pointless type checking, this newer version offers faster and better code completion. The speed of code completion has multiplied manifold. It provides easier to read types and uses opaque result types. The code completion feature executes up to 1.2 to 1.6 times quicker for huge files as compared to previous version.
-
Implementation Of Two Language Proposals
This inference of Swift – the version 5.2 has proposed two languages, both of which are additive updates. One of them shows key path expressions as functions and the other has callable values of user-defined nominal types. Both these do not have any effect on compatibility of source, API resistance and ABI stability. iOS Developers can now utilize the key path expression and it brings in statically callable values. These are majorly used for showing maths function or expressions.
-
Supports Two Modes Of Operation
The new compiler offers dual mode of operation – Whole module and Incremental. These 2 modes have adjustments in the speed with which they compile and the optimization of code that they perform. The incremental build perform best during the development phase and the other mode of operation offers the compiler a comprehensive view of the whole code base with great optimization. Both modes have their own characteristics with each having their own positives.
-
Enhanced Compiler Diagnostics
The basic quality and accuracy of error messages in the Swift compiler has been enhanced in this new version. In the earlier version, it was a tough task to estimate the location of errors. It wasn’t capable enough to identify mistakes made by programming. The new compiler diagnostics qualities offer breadcrumbs that facilitates compiler to come up with accurate diagnostics and that helps developers come up with trustworthy code. It points towards the exact code portion that requires a fix.
-
Enhanced Diagnostic Capabilities
The new version of Swift has come up with much improvised diagnostics that has the competence to enhance the accuracy of error messages, that are released by Xcode while the developer makes a coding mistake.
-
Execution of Filters In Reverse Order
In case of a lazy sequence being filtered, this version offers reverse filtering. This may lead to a little change in execution but in case of multiple filters, they will now execute in the reverse order.
-
callAsFunction() – Call Types As Functions
There are functions that are crucial to Swift programming, though it isn’t a functional language. The newer version of Swift 5.2 treats functions and types in a similar fashion. It empowers developers to call specific types as if they were functions themselves. With Swift 5.2’s callAsFunction() coming up with statically callable values, there is a defined support to argument labels and parameter types. Also, multiple methods can be defined with Swift 5.2 and Swift will decide which one to attend.
This newer version enables functional programming in an object-oriented manner, with its novel callable types feature. Any function could be converted into or used as a type, by making any type callable.
-
Addition Of Subscripts
There is a provision to add subscripts with inbuilt arguments for multiple parameter types. As such, subscripts act as a shortcut to avail member elements of any list or collection. Developers make use of them for setting and fetching values by index rather than writing the entire method.
-
Better Version Of Debugging
The new version of Xcode offers LLDB – the basic and open-source debugging software that is more accurate at redoing type info based on the debug information.
The Future Of Swift
Swift 6 hovers into view – The thing is, when looking at Apple, it’s seldom a zero-sum game. The company continues to develop across all of its products and services, and Swift really is no different. Swift 6 is already in development and this promises to be a far more capable tool for software development across multiple platforms. – Computerworld
As We See Swift Soar High
This release – Swift 5.2 and Xcode 11.4 have been quite beneficial with newer features for testing and debugging, novel diagnostic engine for compiler errors and so much more. Swift now can be applied to implement functional programming ideas, diminishing the lines between types and functions. There is a lot Swift has to offer, the world shall see!
