Apple has made its Swift programming language totally open source, opening up a whole new dimension of opportunities for coders and creators.
Apple has revealed that its Swift programming language is now open source, allowing a whole new generation of coders at all levels to built exciting apps.
Swift was revealed for the first time in 2014 at WWDC, creating a whole new canvas for programmers and developers to build their ideas on.
The Californian tech giant has also launched the Swift.org website with detailed information about Swift open source, including technical documentation, community resources and links to download the Swift source code.
Apple describes it as an intuitive programming language that is easy to learn, even if you’ve never coded before.
Express yourself
It says it is the most expressive scripting language and that it has been designed for safety by eliminating entire categories of common programming errors.
“By making Swift open source the entire developer community can contribute to the programming language and help bring it to even more platforms,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
“Swift’s power and ease of use will inspire a new generation to get into coding, and with today’s announcement they’ll be able to take their ideas anywhere, from mobile devices to the cloud.”
The open source code is available via GitHub and includes support for all Apple software platforms — iOS, OS X, watchOS and tvOS — as well as for Linux.
Components available include a compiler, debugger, standard library, foundation libraries, package manager and REPL.
Swift is licensed under the popular Apache 2.0 open source license with a runtime library exception, enabling users to easily incorporate Swift into their own software and export the language to new platforms.
Swift image via Shutterstock
