Swift was introduced by Apple during 2014 WDC, until then developers used Apple’s Xcode IDE and Objective-C was used create all Apple apps. Exactly a year down the line, Apple has further opened up its rather closed architecture by open sourcing Swift yesterday. Apple hopes to get developers to contribute to Apple App development through this move. Along with the open source launch, Apple has already published a Swift port for Linux computers. To use the Linux port, you’ll need an x84, 64-bit computer and use either the source code to build Swift yourself or download pre-built binaries for Ubuntu. Apple says the port is a work in progress but useful to experiment with Swift on a Linux machine. Apple has also included the Swift compiler, a low-level virtual machine, or LLVM, a low-level debugger and REPL, or read-eval-print-loop shell for coding interaction, similar to Python and other languages. The Swift Package Manager is also available to build code while package repositories are available on GitHub. One of the key advantages in Swift to make programming easier in faster is the concept of Playgrounds: You can modify code on the fly without recompiling to see the effects.
