iPhone app development: Do you go with Swift or Objective-C?

One of the most promising, as well as popular parts of mobile app development is iPhone application development, which has been the reason for the growth of every iPhone app development company out there. What has made iPhone app development companies even more popular is Apple’s introduction of the revolutionary programming language, Swift in 2014? This gave every iPhone development company an alternative to the other iPhone programming language Objective-C. Although Swift is considered to be faster, Objective-C should not be completely dismissed, as it has its own advantages, as well. And so, let’s take a closer look at both these programming languages used by iPhone app development companies in order to make a better, and sound comparison.

Objective-C
Despite Apple’s introduction of Swift, every iPhone app development company is still using Objective-C to build apps. Even today, numerous iPhone app developers vouch for Objective-C, as this programming language has a pretty great track record when it comes to the development of iPhone mobile apps. The following are some of the great features of Objective-C that iPhone app development companies have recognized.

1. A run-time that’s dynamic
   Every iPhone app development company recognizes Objective-C's ability to allow iPhone developers to craft messages at runtime. In addition to this, this programming software’s capabilities also include giving the developers the ability to create classes, adding methods to classes that exist, as well as changing method implementation easily and dynamically, which gives programmers better control of run-time.

2. Garbage collection is automatic
   Automatic garbage collection is something that is supported by Objective-C, which is another reason why every iPhone app development company vouches for this programming language. Automatic garbage collection with Objective-C allows the collector to automatically run in its very own thread along with the code of the application. Garbage collection’s efficiency is pretty great, as it is able to target memory zones that are a priority with garbage values, thus making it much simpler for the app programmer to manage garbage collection.

3. Similar to C and C++
   Another reason why iPhone app development companies still use Objective-C is the fact that anyone who’s familiar with C or C++ can work with Objective-C. And it’s extremely difficult to deny the capabilities that C brings to the table. By being similar to C, programmers working with Objective-C can also access the C libraries. In addition to this, Mac OS X is written in C, as well, and so, working with Objective-C can help create a relationship that’s symbiotic between the mobile app, as well as the laptop/desktop computer’s operating system.

4. Typing capabilities are dynamic
   A dynamic topic such as Python and Ruby, are also supported by Objective-C. And so, developers of every iPhone app development company do not have to bother much about the kind of objects that will pop up during run-time. Furthermore, this simple dynamic typing ability is what makes Objective-C great for programming an iPhone application.

Swift
Although Objective-C has been the primary programming language for iPhone for decades, there are a number of iPhone application developers that have begun to lean towards Swift. The main reason for this is the simple nature of Swift. Besides simplicity, Swift offers a number of other beneficial features, which are:

1. Code that’s easy to read
   The developers of almost every iPhone app development company enjoy using Swift, as it resembles the English language, which makes it much easier to read and understand. Unlike Objective-C that uses the “@“ symbol to differentiate keywords, there aren’t symbols like these in Swift, which makes the code simple to comprehend.

2. Less code
   Swift completely eliminates the need for repetitive coding required for string manipulation, which is what makes it easier. For instance, a programmer can simply add two strings with “+” operator without having to write extensive code.

3. Easy maintenance
   Swift is a programming language that has newer, and more modern features, as it isn’t based on any sort of legacy. With Objective-C, a programmer is needed to maintain two different files of code, in order to achieve a better build time of an executable application. However, this requirement is completely nonexistent with Swift, due to the LLVM compiler and Xcode being able to take care of this automatically. Swift manages to combine both in one code file, itself so that developers don’t have to worry about keeping header files separate from implementation files, which is why iPhone app development company find Swift to be extremely convenient.

4. Unified memory management
   Swift is very unlikely to have memory leaks, which is why it is able to manage memory more efficiently. Furthermore, as Swift can support ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) across code paths that are object-oriented, an iPhone programmer is not required to manually look after memory management. Additionally, Swift manages memory each and every time an object is made.