If you look at the Swift Language guide, you get the distinct impression that the type system is sleek and modern. However the more you dig into it the more eccentricities you find.

The one I’m going to look at today makes sense only if you look at the problem domain from a slightly skewed perspective. I’ve been trying to think whether this is a sensible, pragmatic way of designing a language or a mistake. Judge for yourself.

I’m seeing a surprising amount of vitriol aimed at Swift, Apple’s new programming language for iOS and Mac development. I understand that there can be reasoned debate around the features (or lack thereof), syntax and even the necessity of it but there can be little doubt about the outcome: if you want to consider yourself an iOS developer, it’s a language that you will need to learn.

The only variable I can think of is when you learn it.

Swift is a new programming language designed by Apple for development on OS X and iOS. I thought that I should try to learn it a little so I decided to convert a non-trivial collection of classes from one of my apps (www.cut) into Swift. I always find it better to work on a real project rather than just to play around with things aimlessly. Also, by re-working an old project, I knew that all the problems I would find would be language related rather than anything to do with the architecture.