Swift overview

Swift is Apple's compiled, statically-typed, multi-paradigm language introduced in 2014 as the successor to Objective-C for Apple platforms. It combines protocol-oriented design, value semantics (structs and enums), and modern concurrency (async/await, actors) with a focus on safety and expressiveness. Swift is the primary language for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS development using UIKit (imperative) and SwiftUI (declarative reactive). On the server side, the Swift Server Working Group maintains frameworks such as Vapor and Hummingbird. Swift's ownership model and borrow-checker (in Swift 5.9+) bring Rust-like safety guarantees.