Swift vs Objective-C: Choose Best One for iOS App Development

Posted by Konstant Infosolutions on November 25th, 2019

When we are going to develop our own app, then one thing stops us initially, is to choose the right development platform and related language. The correct technological adoption proffers us a medium to serve our services perfectly. In recent years, mobile app development becomes the reason for a successful business and the medium of serving better business solutions to customers. Thus, choosing the right technology become essential for developers.

Here is a comparison between the two technologies that eliminate the confusion and help you to choose the one that fulfils individual needs.

A brief history of Objective-C and Swift programming language

Objective-C is the primary programming language that has been in the market since 1984 for creating OSX and iOS applications. It can be described as the superset of Language C, keeping the object-oriented and dynamic runtime features. Any valid C program will compile with an Objective-C compiler. It’s all non-object oriented syntax drives from C and its object-oriented syntax drives from SmallTalk.

On the other hand, in 2014, Apple introduces a new programming language called Swift that calls as "Objective-C without C". Swift has a different coding approach, which enhances safety and security. Therefore, it beat out Objective-C in 2018 and presenting its winning approach since its launching. It is more popular among the start-ups and gap between Swift and Objective-C will only continue to grow.

Why start-ups choose Swift over Objective-C while developing an iOS app?

Ease of learning

The most notable advantage of choosing the right language is its learning time. As per the feedback from the programmers, Swift takes a month to learn the basics, which is very less time as compared to Objective-C. Also, being an Apple product, you can easily find the complete guide to this language on the web.

Performance

Officially, Apple claims that Swift is 2.6 times faster than Objective-C. Both the languages are statistically typed that uses the same iOS SDK and the high-quality Low-Level Virtual Machine compiler. But still, they have a performance issue. The Objective-C uses the runtime code compilation, rather than the compile time. It means, the object calls within the code requires code compilation a significant number of times that affect performance. Whereas, Swift is the same as that of C++, considered as the fastest in algorithms.

Safety

Swift provides an improved safety feature for the iOS application. While comparing the safety feature of both the language, Objective-C approach uses null pointers that creates vulnerabilities in security, and gives developers higher access to the data. It may cause data breaching. On the other hand, Swift developed for clean code. It is a type-safe and memory-safe language that capable enough to prevent errors. Also, it eliminated the concept of the pointer that enhanced security and robustness.

Maintenance

Managing file in Objective-C is quite frustrating as it maintains two separate code files. Whereas, Swift is easy to maintain and come with the solution (Compilers) LLVM (Low-Level Virtual Machine) and Xmind that figure out the requirement plus automatically complete the incremental builds.

Memory management

Swift comes with better memory management than Objective-C. Both the languages use ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) that manages memory with no programmer effort. But, Objective-C supports the ARC within the Cocoa API. That means, it cannot access C code and other APIs like Core Graphics. In contrast, Swift supports the ARC for all APIs that permit a streamlined way for memory management. Thus, huge memory leaks are impossible in the Swift language.

Libraries support (Dynamic/Static)

Swift supports dynamic libraries, whereas Objective-C supports Static libraries. Dynamic libraries are loaded directly into an app’s memory and optimize the app’s performance. Also, it helps to reduce the app size and speed-up the file load time.

But static libraries are linked at the bottom of the compilation process that requires recompiled if any changes occur. Hence, it takes time and reduces the speed as compared to Swift.

Concluding Note

As we examine the Objective-C vs. Swift comparison, it is clear that Objective-C is outdated than Swift. In contrast, Swift comes with progressive solutions and supported by the Apple community. It simplifies the coding patterns for iOS application development and now become the leading programming language for creating engaging, user-friendly mobile apps. But the fact is picking the best-suited programming language depends on the project, budget, and developers, as well as a reference to a particular programming language.

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Konstant Infosolutions

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Konstant Infosolutions
Joined: December 5th, 2017
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