Apple announced that its programming language, Swift, is now open source. Swift was first introduced by Apple in 2014 and it is currently the fastest growing programming language in the world. Swift was initially released by Apple to only be used to develop apps for iOS, OS X, tvOS and WatchOS. Swift is unique in the sense that it makes it easier for developers to code apps for Apple operating systems.
With Swift being open source, third party developers outside of Apple will be able to help develop the programming language even further and eventually take Swift to other platforms in the future. Besides announcing this, Apple has also launched Swift.org, a website dedicated for the programming language. Interestingly, Apple also released a version of Swift today that is compatible with Linux.
Although Swift is going open source, Apple will still be leading the development. However, it is up to developers if they want to bring Swift onto Android and Windows. Apple confidently said that it wants Swift to be the main programming language in the next 20 years. Swift open source code is available on swift.org as well as Github.
Oddly, even though the programming language is now open source, the open source version of Swift won’t be able to create apps that are intended for the Apple App Store. Developers that would like to do so has to pay Apple’s fee which will entitle them with a full version of Swift.
Redmonk, an analyst firm that ranks programming languages, mentioned earlier this year that Swift is growing faster than anything else it is currently tracking. This shows a lot about Apple’s new programming language.
(Source: Apple via Ars Technica)
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