Swift Vs React Native- Which One To Choose In 2021?

 

If you’re looking to build iOS app, you’ve got a list of languages to work with. Swift and react native are some of them. A question we often get in 2021 is whether to choose React native or swift for iOS app development. Both platforms are used to create excellent native apps that run smoothly on iOS, but they need different skill sets and resources to build. There are many factors to consider while choosing a language for app development. So here we will compare Swift vs React Native with different parameters to help you decide the most appropriate one for your project. But before digging to the comparison, let us see overview of each technology in detail.

What Is Swift?

Swift is a modern, general-purpose and multi-paradigm programming language designed by Apple to build applications for iOS, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Linux OS. It is distributed on Apache License, that makes it available for community to use. Swift is easy to read, write and maintain with human friendly syntax. Also, it interoperates with objective C and Apple’s Cocoa and Cocoa touch frameworks. Modern software design approach makes it an efficient, expressive and reliable general-purpose language to develop complex apps with fast performance.

Slideshare, Airbnb, Twitter are popular apps built with Swift.

What Is React Native?

React Native is a cross platform open source native app-development framework for iOS and Android that is maintained by Facebook. Main focus is on Android and iOS. There is no official support for macOS and watchOS, react native works on these platforms also. React Native is written with combination of XML-Esque markup and Javascript that is also known as JSX. It is supported by Facebook. 

Facebook, walmart, instagram, Wix are some of the popular apps build with React native.

Also know- Amazing steps to optimize the performance of React Native Applications

Swift Vs React Native-

1. Architecture-

Swift-

Viper, Clean, MVVM, MV are some architectures used for apps built in Swift. Clean architecture has Xcode templates that generate components and these template components can be modified according to the requirements. Viper architecture is used with SwiftUI that separates functions, which are easy to test, maintain and helps in rapid app development. 

React Native-

React Native possesses a bridge between Native thread and Javascript thread. According to this functionality, Javascript code communicates with the platform and Native API. In IOS, React native uses JavascriptCore separately to run code, and it combines JavascriptCore within the android app. This may increase the app size and resulting in performance issues.

2. Performance-

Swift-

It is capable to run complex app logics and heavy computations rapidly. LLVM compiler converts Swift code into optimized native code that provides direct access to device hardware and API. Standard library and simple syntax helps to improve performance across apple devices and app servers. API stability feature helps to optimize performance. As per apple, apps built in Swift are 2.6x faster than apps developed in Objective C.

React Native-

React Native has three elements- native thread, javascript thread, and bridge that acts as mediator to both threads. When a user opens a React Native app, native thread sends a message to javascript thread through bridge. React apps have low performance because the number of messages that javascript thread can process is limited. So whenever the limit is crossed, the UI starts lagging. There are some cases where the application UI takes more than 16 milliseconds to render the program.

React native’s app performance can be improved by using third-party libraries such as Proguard that optimizes bytecodes. Elements like Slowlog help setting performance timers that help to track performance issues and to solve them.

3. User Experience-

Swift-

As a native iOS language, Swift creates a good user experience. APIs and native tools can be simply integrated into a Swift app to deliver a seamless experience. Also, it can offer smooth in-app navigation. SwiftUI back intended to create better user interfaces for Swift apps. With this framework UI created for one device can be translated to other platforms with few code lines that helps to deliver a uniform user experience. Also, it supports dynamic type, localization for common items, dark mode, widgets and so on. These features can be integrated easily by writing declarative Swift syntax.

React Native-

Material Design of Android and Style Design in iOS are transforming by the day and it is hard for React Native to keep up with constant change in the requirements of native platforms. Also, ready made react native UI kits like React Virgin, Shoutem and Ant Design make it more difficult to create consistent designs across platforms. But some components like ScrollView fixed header, Modal components, Snap carousals, Activity indicators, and Pagination components help to improve the UX across multi-platform. 

4. App Size-

Swift-

Now, swift is binary compatible language and this compatibility reduces the app size. Also, stable ABI has made including Swift libraries into every iOS platform possible. This results in smaller app size. Specialized metadata records generation at compile time helps to reduce memory usage, maintaining fast performance. But, prebuilt metadata records might increase binary code size that can be reduced by using Bitcode, optimizing downloading and installation size and so on.

React Native-

The size of Hello World app with React Native is 7 MB and by adding the native dependencies the size increased up to 13.4 MB.  React Native can iterate apps rapidly and at minimal size better than Flutter. Enabling Proguard and use of enableSeparateBuildPerCPUArchitecture element will reduce app size significantly by auto-generating split builds for all native and external libraries.

5. Suitability-

Swift-

Swift is the best choice if you want to add native features or some other complex integrations are needed. It performs well for apps that needs native iOS features. Swift is capable to develop apps of complex user interfaces. 

React Native-

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/swift-vs-react-native-which-one-to-choose-in-2021/

Swift Vs Python – Which One Is Best?

 

Technology is changing day by day as per the need of competition and future. Every year or month, we experience modifications in programming languages. Some programming languages become more popular whereas some become outdated. These days, swift and python are two programming languages that have gained popularity in ios development market. What’s more, even their popularity grows consistently and holds a special space among the software developers. As per the recent statistics, Python is the most popular language and preferred by developers. Whereas, Swift is also popular like Python and it will be the next fastest-growing language after python. So finally which will be an iOS leader in 2021? And why? To know the answer of this question, you must know the comparison of Swift vs Python. Let’s see the differences between these two languages. 

Swift Vs Python Comparison-

Can you say that a particular language is best? How can you choose a best programming language for your product? This all depends on various factors like purpose of the product, its features, market you are targeting, and your budget. Sometimes, there are chances to change programming language. So it is necessary to know the differences and similarities between Python and Swift. Here we will see detailed comparison Swift vs Python.

Swift-

Swift is a powerful open-source programming language announced in 2014 by Apple. Due to the open source it has gained a huge popularity. In 2017, Swift increased its roots and grabbed the position under the top 11 programming languages. It is easy to use and anyone with an idea can create something incredible with this programming language.

Various popular companies like linkedin, Clear, Kickstarter, SkyGuide etc. are prominently using Swift as a programming language for their iOS app development.

Know the reasons of – Why enterprises prefer to develop apps in Swift?

Advantages of Swift-

1. Open-source-

Swift became an open-source in the year 2015. This had a major impact on Swift popularity. And in 2015, it became GitHub’s most loved language and in 2016 it came in the 2nd place.

2. Easy Code Readability And Maintenance-

If you are searching a simple and easy to read programming language, Swift will be the best choice for iOS development. Because of less code, Swift is compact and also can be reused to a great extent. It can also maintain everything in .swift file, reducing developer’s headache of maintaining two separate files for single code. When you use Swift for iOS apps, it doesn’t hamper any apps’ performance.

3. Compatibility With Objective C-

Swift is compatible with Objective-C’s libraries and frameworks. Language correlation allows you to import frameworks from Objective-C using Swift syntax. Language correlation allows you to import frameworks from Objective-C using swift syntax. With this, programmers can use Object C APIs and classes.

4. Improved Performance-

Performance of Swift depends on C++ likes, meaning that it is known as one of the fastest programming languages beating Objective C. As per the analysis, Swift language is three times faster than Objective-C and 8 times faster than Python. Also, its compatibility with cross platform and dynamic library support helps it to perform best in terms of speed.

Disadvantages Of Swift-

1. Limited Talent Resource-

As swift is in its initial stage, there is a lack of talented Swift developers. The demand for Swift coders is increasing.

2. Instability-

Many developers point to the same issue. Due to the changes in new versions, Swift is unstable. Means if a developer wants to switch a project to a new version of Swift, they need to rewrite the code. This issue was partly solved by introducing Swift Migration Tool for XCode that makes easy migration from third to fourth version.

3. Less Native Libraries-

Still there is a lack of native Swift tools that can work seamlessly in various versions. Many libraries and frameworks are made for early versions but are useless for new.

Python-

Python is a dynamic high-level programming language released in 1991. With the time it became useful for various purposes, like machine learning, data science and back-end development. In 2017, python was the fastest growing programming language. You can use python for web development, DevOps/system administration/writing automation scripts, data analysis, programming of web parsers/scrapers, educational purpose, machine learning, software testing/writing automated tests etc.

Many popular companies like Dropbox, Netflix, Quora, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify use Python.

Advantages of Python-

1. Easy-

Simplicity of code and readability are the two most important benefits of learning Python. It looks like simple english so easy to ready and use by everyone. Python is a suitable and good solution for beginners who want to get to know a programming language regardless of their skill.  

2. Open-Source-

Python is open source, thus one can download and change it’s source code. And this helped to build a strong community that continues improving it.

3. Object Oriented Language-

This programming language consists of both procedural and object oriented languages. Due to the procedural support, developers can reuse code. Also, the object-oriented methodology can access different inheritance and finalizing data and functions into one.

4. Large Standard Library-

Being old in a programming industry, Python comes with a huge range of libraries and frameworks for different purposes. Standard library provides a  set of modules and functions, so developers don’t need to write code again for each single thing. Some popular libraries are- Plotly, NumPy, Pandas, Pipenv for regular expressions, unit-testing and web browsers. It can also include popular frameworks like Django, Flask, CherryPy and PyTorch.

5. Integration With Other Languages-

Python is an extensible and embedded programming language, thus can be easily integrated to C++, C and Java apps.

6. Improved Productivity-

Python is a productive language and because of simplicity developers can focus on solving problems rather than understanding the syntax or behavior of a programming language. You just need to write a few lines of code and achieve more by doing more things.

Disadvantages Of Python-

1. Design Restriction-

Python has some design restrictions. Since, python is dynamically typed language which uses duck typing, it automatically detects a type of variable. Sometimes it creates issues. You have no need to identify the type of variable when declaring it, but it can cause runtime errors. 

2. Not Ideal For Mobile Development-

For mobile app development, Python is not a perfect language. But you can use Kivy- a cross platform Python framework to build mobile apps.

3. Memory Consumption-

Python consumes more memory and so doesn’t support intense memory tasks. 

Which One To Choose?

Both Swift and Python are good at what they do. Apple claims that Swift is  8.4x faster than Python. Python is older in the programming industry and Swift is rapidly gaining popularity in the market. If you are looking for a programming language to develop the best mobile app that work seamlessly with iOS platform then Swift is the best choice. But If you want to develop an artificial intelligence solution, Python will be the best decision for you. From all this, you came to know that choosing Python or Swift for coding depends on your purpose.

How you can Switch your apps from Objective C to Swift?

When Apple Inc. has released the first iPhone SDK in 2007 and insist outsider developers to make iPhone applications, it has declared Objective-C as official iOS programming language supporting Xcode as a development tool and IDE. Swift offers many advantages like, writing less code, less maintenance of apps, speed up app development process, less bugs and crashes, strong security and so on. If you have been working on Objective C, it is the right time to shift over Swift. A large number of the well known iOS applications like Yahoo, LinkedIn, Lyft, Weather and so on have effectively headed out from Objective-C to Swift effectively.

Also know, Swift VS Objective-C: What language to Choose in 2019?

Objective C to Swift Converter-

Apple offers modern Objective-C converter in X-code. This helps developers to do some significant things during conversion. These things are – Implementing Enum Macros, Changing ID to Instance Type, helps in updating @proprty syntax. We should keep in mind that converter helps in detection and also implementation of mechanics of potential changes. It will never represent the semantics of the code. It implies iOS developers need to go manually for alterations and improve the quality of Swift code also. To use converter in X code-

Edit → Convert → To Modern Objective-C Syntax

Tips While Using Objective C to Swift Converter-

Switch apps from Objective C to Swift

1. Convert One Class at a Time-

Always remember that, you cannot convert all your code from Objective-C to Swift at once. To do this, you have to choose one class at a time. A few classes are written in Swift while others in Objective-C. And you get a hybrid target once the Swift file added to Objective-C application target. Swift can’t have subclasses. Hence you can pick two files to be specific a header file, which is .h and contains @interface section and a .m file that contains @implementation section. You don’t need to develop a header file as the .m document imports the .h file if it needs to refer to a class.

2. Creating a Bridging Header-

When you include an Objective-C file into Swift target or vice versa, you will have opportunities to develop a bridging header file. Hence, when you import (.h) record into bridging over header, it gets visible to Swift.

3. Performing the Nil Checks-

In the Objective-C programming when a message is sent to a nil object, you eventually get a zero value in return. Hence, if you need to avoid  this from getting a nil value, it is necessary to opt for the nil checks according to the requirements. Normally, you get it as a generic enum-

public enum Optional<Wrapped> : _Reflectable, NilLiteralConvertible

In a normal case you get both of  two; a value of Wrapped type or a value that doesn’t exist.

4. Wrapped Value-

With swift you have another benefit. You also get the syntactic sugar for stating the types optional. It enables you to substitute the Optional<String> with String? You can get the wrapped value from the elective container utilizing two techniques- Optional Chaining and Forced Wrapping. In the primary case, it is used if the conditional statement acquires a value in case of its existence. With second case, the conditional statement isn’t nil. In the event that it contains a variable you would get an outcome without applying conditions or else it would crash. The completely unwrapped optional in Swift is known as the String. It can be shown through an example:

class ExampleClass {
   var nonOptionalString: String
   var unwrappedOptionalString: String!
   var optionalString: String?
   init(string: String) {
       nonOptionalString = string
   }
}

All things considered, you can go over three possibilities which can land at this point.

1. The first is that of nonoptinalString. It’s value will never be a zero. It should contain a variable when object is getting initialized or it will crash.
2. Next is unwrappedOptionalString where the value of string is nil. Thus, if you are trying to get over a nothing value object, the program will crash.
3. Last is optionalString where the string remains nil yet is taken as a normal optional variable.

Along these lines, when composing the Objective-C code, better categorize your variables into two distinct classes; Nullable and _Nonnull type annotation.

Therefore, the earlier indicated illustration would resemble something like this:

@interface ExampleClass: NSObject
@property (nonatomic, strong) NSString * _Nonnull nonOptionalString;
@property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *unwrappedOptionalString;
@property (nonatomic, strong) NSString * _Nullable optionalString;
- (instancetype)initWithString:(nonnull NSString *string);
@end

5. Tuples-

Apple has also presented new development language called Tuples. It groups different values into one compound value and is a better tool in the event that you are developing a model at a place and directly isn’t easy to understand.

6. Extensions-

The extensions in the Objective-C language are combined into a single entity in Swift. It offers another functionality to the current class, structure and protocol and there is no need to avail the source code for extending types.

7. Enumerations-

The Objective-C limits the code enumerations to the primitive types only.

If you want to map the integer enumeration value to the consequent strings for demonstrating results to the user or sending to the backend an array is required.

But, Swift makes you convenient as you don’t need to experience these complexities. It is offering new enumerations with more options.

enum ExampleEnum {
    case ExOne, ExTwo, ExThree
}

It can store the related values and you can store raw values in Swift enumerations using it like as Objective-C.

enum AnotherExampleEnum {
   case ExOne(String, Int)
   case ExTwo(Int)
}

8. Subscripts-

These are generally used to get data from a group or group of classes’ structures or enumerations without utilizing any technique. Subscripts help in regaining the values by index and as such you don’t need to store or retrieve. The elements in Array instance can be seen as someArray (index) and for Directory instance as someDictionary [key]. Just follow the syntax:

subscript (index: Int) -> Int {
get {
//for declaring subscript value
}
set (newValue) {
//for defining values
}
}

9. Type Implication-

Type safety for the iOS development usually refers to an integer which is declared with a specific type. It can not be altered and remains fixed. The compiler decides what variable type will continue as indicated by the given value.

For example:

var str = "One String"
// OR
var str2:String
Str2 = "Second String"

When you are attempting to start by putting number values to a str2 variable, the compiler is said to show an error.

Str2 = 10 //error: Cannot put value of type 'Int' to type 'String'

10. Function-

Swift offers a simpler approach with regards to the function syntax. Each function includes a type. And type contains function’s parameter types and return type. It allows you to either allocate a function to variable or pass it as a value. The application developers can also give default value to parameter.

func stringCharacterscount (s: String) -> Int
   {
return s.characters.count
   }
func stringToInt (s: String) -> Int
   {
if let a = Int (s)
   {
return a
   }
return 0
   }
func executeSuccessor (f: String -> Int, s: String) -> Int
   {
Return f(s). successor()
   }
let f1 = stringCharacterscount
let f2 = stringToInt
 
executeSuccessor (f1, s: "5555") //5
executeSuccessor (f2, s: "5555") //5556

11. Dealing with Errors-

In this way, when you are managing the errors in Objective-C you need to use the reference to NSError variable. But, if this approach is not appropriate, you need to develop an NSError instance and write to passed variable. You need to check the error parameter and verify that it is non-nil.

- (nonnull NSString *)exampleMethod:(nonnull NSString *)param error:(NSError **)error {
   if (!param.length) {
       *error = [NSError errorWithDomain:[NSBundle mainBundle].bundleIdentifier code:-10 userInfo:nil];
   return nil;
   }
   // do work
}

In case of Swift you get circulating, throwing, catching and controlling errors that can be recovered.

Conversion Process-

1. Choose a pair of (.h) and (.m) files you want to convert.
2. Search #import “MyViewController.h” across the code document and remove it.
3. In all .m files, you have to replace #import “[filename].h” instances with #import “[MyProject]-Swift.h”
4. In all the .h files, replace @class [filename] with #import “[filename].h”
5. Transform Objective C files to Swift using Swiftify Xcode Extension
6. The .h and .m files have to be replaced from project with the converted .swift file.
7. Now, it is time to fix the conversion error, and Swiftify extension can help you in this regard.
8. Now, you can build and run the project smoothly.
9. If you have chosen to convert the entire project, you can transform AppDelegate class now.

Conclusion–

Swift has rightly become one of the top options for the swift developers. With this new programming language, Apple offers a few advantages over Objective-C. Most developers have just decided to convert their applications from Objective C to Swift. The transformation must be done cautiously without missing any step. Also you need an experienced professional to carry out this job. 

If you are thinking to do the same, connect with solace team. Experts at solace are well proficient in new trends and technologies and will surely give you the best solution as you desire. We will be happy to help you.

Swift 3 migration for IoS app

When Apple released the newest version of its IDE Xcode 8 in June 2016, they released a beta update of Swift 3 along with it—the newest, open-source iteration of the Swift mobile programming language.

About Swift 3-

Swift 3

If you are new to Swift, just have a look to Swift vs Objective C. Apple developed Swift. It is a newer, streamlined language to better align with the platform’s evolving hardware and software. Swift allows rapid development by allowing developers to be more productive. This requires less code and also has better readability and is prone to fewer errors than its predecessors. Swift represents the direction that iOS has been headed for a while. If you haven’t migrated over yet, the Swift 3 iteration is a vital point and also a great opportunity to roll out the improvement.

Migrating to Swift 3-

How critical is to migrate existing code to Swift 3? Apple underlines that it is the right time to get on board—especially if you need to exploit all the new features in Xcode 8. This is the version that most closely aligns with the future of iOS development – migrating code from previous versions now will help you future-proof your app. Xcode 8 has a Swift Migration Assistant and a quick pre-migration checklist. Make a note that migrating to Swift 3.0 is a quite difficult. Expect that the migration tool will require some work to fix compiler errors after migration. It is not completely error-free but Apple has compiled a list of some of the known migration errors.

Apple suggests: “If you need to apply any workarounds, discard the changes that you accepted from the migration assistant earlier, apply the workarounds, and invoke the assistant manually to re-try the conversion from the start.”  

An example of something you can be proactive about changing is type names that slam with renamed Foundation types. We had a class called Operation which post-migration conflicted with NSOperation being renamed Operation. Note that you can run the migration assistant multiple times without discarding the prior-run’s changes. 

The clunkiness and also slowness of the migration assistant created a feedback loop that was too long. An example of undesirable migration assistant behavior is generated operator overloads to account for optional comparison changes in Swift 3. Here’s an example of a method that was added to the top of one of our class files:

 fileprivate func < <T : Comparable>(lhs: T?, rhs: T?) -> Bool {

  switch (lhs, rhs) {

  case let (l?, r?):

    return l < r

  case (nil, _?):

    return true

  default:

    return false

  }

}

One thing the migration assistant does very well is handle changing how we call system APIs in Swift 3 style. For example:

N SNSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter()    Became:           NotificationCenter.default

Manual Migration-

In migration guide, Apple says “While the migrator will take care of many mechanical changes for you, it is likely that you will need to make more manual changes to be able to build the project after applying the migrator changes.” At this point in the process you have to do many more manual changes. In your note-taking exercise you have to try to identify regular patterns of issues, and also sometimes you have to make regular expressions to perform a project-wide search for code matching those patterns. This  will allow you to take large steps towards reducing compile errors as opposed to fixing individual issues and trying to recompile.

Feedback Loops-

Large mixed Swift/Objective-C projects compile particularly slowly. This long feedback cycles, and you have to make larger changes between compile attempts to offset the slow compile times when we’d usually prefer to have smaller iterations. This is basically the same challenge that kept us from needing to run the migration assistant multiple times.

private -> fileprivate-

The migration assistant changed private methods and variables to file private which is functionally similar. But what we really needed semantically, when you wrote those declarations is the equivalent of the Swift 3 private access modifier. 

Underscores in Method Signatures Everywhere-

Because Swift 3 style often prefers to not label the first method parameter, the migration assistant changed methods to suppress the first parameter label. This was an improvement at the call site over patterns:

doSomethingWithModel(model: someModel)

Which became less redundant:

doSomethingWithModel(someModel)

There were, however, instances where we did not prefer the label-free conversion where the Swift API Design Guidelines suggest a first parameter label. The above example might be better as:           

doSomething(with: someModel)                                                                                                                                                                 

Optional Handling-

Optional handling from Objective-C APIs to Swift was improved, so there are some cases where the migration assistant added code to explicitly unwrap instances that previously didn’t require the ! operator. This uncovered some places where we needed to perform proper optional handling, so we refactored accordingly. There were other cases where the migrator choose to force-unwrap expressions that could not assess to optional. In those cases, removed the ! operator. We wanted to add nullability tags to related Objective-C headers, and then if that wasn’t viable, we put in explicit optional handling on the Swift side.

Objective- C Categories-

Objective- C categories were were never again certainly available to Swift, and we regularly needed to cast back to an Objective-C type to access those category methods.

Trailing Closure Syntax-

While not a compile issue, emphatically prefer trailing closure syntax for methods that take one closure, and the migration assistant is not able to generate code that way. We changed code that migrated with closure parameters:

    DispatchQueue.main.async(execute: {

            // Do something })

To use trailing closure syntax:

     DispatchQueue.main.async {

           //Do something }

AnyObject -> Any

NSDictionarys from Objective-C used to import to Swift as [NSObject, AnyObject] and now are imported as [AnyHashable, Any]. This impact the most in our JSON parsing utility where we need to change to use Any instead of AnyObject.

Open Classes-

Some of the classes were marked with the open keyword which implies that they are subclassable outside of the module they are defined in. Most of the time these class changed to be final because no intention allowing those classes to be extended or be accessible outside the module.

@escaping-

closures passed as parameters are now non-escaping by default, so basically meaning that you can’t hold onto them after the method terminates, we had to add @escaping to closure parameters in lots of places.

Collection Indices-

Instead of calling  successor() on an Index, we needed to call index(after:) on the related collection due to a change in how collection indices work in Swift 3. Collection extension helper class includes this. The migrator left us with this: 

<#T##Collection corresponding to `i`##Collection#>.index(after: i)

Which we changed to:

self.index(after: i)

Conclusion-

This has been a story about dealing with the most frightening of Swift migrations we hope it helps you in your effort.

Are you looking to develop your business software with Swift 3? Solace is able to give you the best software solution through their experts. Contact us for any swift 3 development that will give you the success that your business deserves.

Swift VS Objective-C: Which language to Choose in 2019?

Read More at-
Objective-C is the primary programming language that you can use for developing software for iOS. This language is a superset of the C programming language. It provides object-oriented capabilities and a dynamic runtime. While, in 2014, Apple launched Swift programming language for iOS mobile apps. This language is an alternative to Object C, an object oriented superset of the C programming language. Swift programming language is designed to be compatible with all existing iOS development tools—xCode, Objective-C, and the Cocoa framework. It is safe to use and has improved features, so it is replacing the Objective C. 

Disadvantages of Objective C-

1. As Objective-C is built on top of C, it lacks namespacing. All classes in an Objective-C application should be globally unique. So to avoid collision there is a convention of prefixing the names of classes. This is the reason we have the ‘NS’ prefix for the class in the Foundation Framework and the ‘UI’ prefix for the classes in UIKit.
2. The ability to send a message on a nil object without crashing and the lack of strict typing lead to bugs that are hard to trace and fix.
3. The language is syntactically verbose and complex, but this is expected given that it is a fairly old language.
4. Explicit pointers.

Advantages of Swift of being more popular-

1. It is an open source programming language.
2. Swift has a huge development community
3. it is faster, safer and easier to read and write
4. it supports dynamic libraries
5. Swift has better memory management.

Here we will see the reasons why one should use Swift for next iOS app development.

1. Swift is Faster-

New technologies need high speed of performance, and Swift is totally fulfilling this need. According to test analysis, it shows the same performance as C++ for the FFT and Mandelbrot algorithms. Swift is more young language so many improvements are going to be done in the future.

The reason why everyone is buzzing about the future of swift is simple that Swift is rapidly developing language. 

2. Easy to read and write-

Reason behind more use of Swift is its simple syntax. Hence the reading and writing of code is easy. While, Objective C requires more symbols, semicolon to end line, parenthesis surrounding conditional expressions inside “if” or “else” statements, etc. Swift does not any of these. Whereas it uses comma-separated list of parameters within parentheses. Implementing any option in Swift requires writing fewer code strings than Objective C language. This avoids mistakes so the code becomes cleaner. As a result, developers require less time to complete a complex task. Swift is easily understandable for programmers using Java, JavaScript, Python, C# and C++. They can easily adopt code written in Swift.

3. Swift is Safer-

Remember the nil pointer variables (uninitialized) in Objective-C turning the expression to no-operation and leading to app crashes? Just forget about this issue when using Swift. Swift was designed with safety in mind. It produces a compiler error, whenever you write wrong code. This implies all the bugs can be fixed at development stage without assessing the whole code a while later. 

4. Better memory management- 

One of the problems at Objective-C is ARC (Automatic Reference Counting), that is supported within the Cocoa API and object-oriented code. However, the code is not available for procedural C code and such APIs as Core Graphics. That prompts the immense leakage of memory. Swift has solved this problem by making ARK complete with the procedural and object-oriented code paths. Due to this programmers can focus on the app logic and its features instead of managing memory within an app.

5. Dynamic Libraries-

As per above discussion, Swift is a fast developing language. It also allows you to update your apps as soon as the new Swift version arrives. This is possible due to the use of dynamic libraries, presented together with iOS 8. Previously, the static libraries updates were performed together with such major updates like the new iOS version. Dynamic libraries for their part, allow connecting pieces of code directly to the app. This helps to keep your project updated, reduces the initial size of the app, and also speeds up a load of external libraries and minimizes the time needed to load new content.

Migrating from Swift to Objective-C is easy, too. Developers can take advantage of Swift’s advanced features by replacing chunks of app code written in Objective-C with Swift.

Swift is designed to work with the Cocoa Touch framework; you’ll just need to set up a Swift development environment in Xcode. Then, import Cocoa frameworks, APIs, and Objective-C code modules to get started.

Disadvantages of Swift:

1. Higher compile time.
2. No direct way of using C++ libraries.
3. Module format stability is still not achieved and is required for developers who want to share their code as a binary framework.

Conclusion-

Apple offers great interoperability between Objective-C and Swift. Also it is not dropping support for Objective-C in future. It is better for programmers to start migrating parts of their Objective-C code to Swift because it is ABI Stable now. Swift is now officially ABI stable and can be considered to be a mature language. The future updates in Swift would not break the current code written from now on in Swift 5.

1. If you are developing a binary framework, you should suggest waiting for Swift to achieve Module Format Stability.
2.  Also, if you are dealing with C++ and Objective-C++ codebase or framework, then you would need a mix of Objective-C and Swift. The Objective-C part can interface directly with the C++ or Objective-C++ parts of your code and the Swift part can then use Objective-C classes to interact with the C++ or Objective-C++ code.

Confused to choose the swift or Objective C for ios development? Contact us for a free consultation and solution regarding Swift vs Objective C. We at Solace are here to help your businesses to best ios development through our experts.

10 Best IoT Programming Languages

https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/10-best-iot-programming-languages/

The internet of things, or IoT, is a system of inter-related computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects or any physical devices that are provided with unique identifiers (UID’s)and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human- to- human or human- to- computer interaction. The Internet of things has came to existence due to occurrence of multiple technologies, real-time analytics, machine learning, commodity sensors, and embedded systems.

Languages used for IoT development are more or less the same when it comes to desktop apps, mobile apps, and servers. So it might seem like there’s no difference other than smart objects are like little computers. Although this is sort of true, there are some significant differences when it comes to all the things that make up IoT. 

Most popular languages for IoT programming are C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, Assembly, B#, Parasail, Rust, Swift. Let’s see one by one.

Best IoT Programming Languages-

1. C-

• C language is one of the most popular and important among all the lot programming languages. This language is the base for many other coding languages.
• If you are thinking to embedded system, C is the best choice. It easily interacts with hardware and also it doesn’t require a lot of processing power.
• Implementing a complex logic in C is easier than any other language and finding a C developer with much more experience is easier.
• As per expert’s opinion C is the language for embedded systems programming. Its proximity to machine language makes it impressively fast.

2. C++-

• If you want to go beyond of C for programming language, C++  should be your next choice.
• C doesn’t have object oriented pre-processing power like C++. C++ is more layered with its objects, classes and abstractions.
• It helps developers to use other languages including C#, D,  Java and Python. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg as it encourages the use of many more languages. Thus helps to resolve a complex problem easily.

3. Java –

• Java is the most popular coding languages among Iot programmers. This is true when it comes to consumer IoT (‘write it once’ and ‘Run anywhere’), but also has the capability to twist according to industrial IoT.
• Java is a portable, object oriented language. It has rarely any hardware dependencies. For any hardware dependencies it uses hardware support library
• Java is also a language that has taken coding techniques from Mesa, C, C++, and many others. Also, it’s popular to enable debugging code on a computer and then moving it to a chip via a Java Virtual Machine(JVM).

4. JavaScript-

• Today, all HTML and Web browsers use JavaScript as their programming language. It has taken some bits and pieces from other languages(Python & C) so you can say that it is a scripting language  that shares other language libraries like java.
• JavaScript plus pointers is easy to learn and  common language all over the Internet. Strong developer community is available for JavaScript and, plenty of video resources are available (tutorials, websites) to understand the language. So using JavaScript is not a challenging task.
• JavaScript is present everywhere in web apps and websites and now web developers can easily move to IoT development without learning new languages.

5. Python-

• For database apps, you can use Python. It is an easy programming language to understand and utilize in IoT projects.
• Though Python is started as a scripting language to merge code together, it has emerged one of the primary languages used by a lot of developers.
• Python is a good choice for an IoT app that requires readability and compact code. Flexibility allows distribution of compact executable code. Hence, any run-time compiler can run Python.
• Small devices have limited computational power and memory, so developers had to be creative to make life easy, so they choose  Python.
• Python’s clean syntax is great for database arrangement. Any app which requires data to be arranged in a database format and uses tables for data control, Python will be your right choice. It is more responsive and successfully executable next to C and C++.

6. Assembly-

• If you want to keep your IoT applications compact, in such cases you can go with assembly language. Whether it is not more popular language but it is easy to use for compact IoT applications.
• It’s a low-level programming language.
• Assembler packages and assembles pure machine code efficiently to be executed by the processor.

7. B# –

• B# is a small, efficient embedded control language. It can run on various platforms with only 24k memory, compared to overhead on other packages, this is less.
• B# is specifically used for developing small applications and can use this language on multiple platforms using an Embedded Virtual Machine(EVM) that supports B#.

8. Parasail-

• Parasail is good option when IoT application needs a language that supports parallel processing. But it is important for developers to understand the difference between concurrent and parallel processors.
• It is an evolved, compiled and object-oriented language. Along with C, Java or Python syntax, you can program Parasail.

9. Rust –

• Mozilla developed an open source language Rust, as Google’s Go. It is considered as the follower of Go, and is able to do some things that previous couldn’t.
• To share information among different channels automatically Rust is useful. .
• Rust is popular for concurrent programming.

10. Swift-

• Swift is a popular language for developing IoS apps. Wherever you want to interact by iphones and ipads, you can use Swift in IoT.
• As swift gets more popular, Apple also wants to lead in HomeIoT. in such cases company has been building infrastructure and libraries so it becomes easy to developers to focus on the task.

Final Words-

All the above languages has their own role and are effective in their space area but that one will stand out which supports the end use of the application. Java is a programming language that is leading but it can change over time and according to the user perspective areas of functionalities. Best IoT Programming Languages are those, which can fulfill the user requirement efficiently and effectively.

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