Swift 2.0 Going Open Source

Last year, Apple introduced their very own programming language named Swift, which has since focused on making the app building process a lot easier. Earlier this week at WWDC, Apple announced Swift 2.0 claiming that the newest version “has even better performance, a new error handling API, and first-class support for availability checking.” But the thing that has Apple fans most excited is the fact that Swift 2.0 will be open source.

 

Making Swift open source will give developers the opportunity to access all of Swift’s innermost workings and possibly win over anyone who has reservations about adopting a proprietary Apple language. In a recent blog post by Apple, the company also claimed that at launch they intend to contribute ports to Linux in addition to watchOS, OS X and iOS. These announcements could be huge for Apple; then again, we never really know do we?

Currently, on Reddit’s 267,257 strong subreddit community, Swift is the “talk of the town” ahead of every other piece of Apple news today. Just read over this Reddit thread and try to absorb all the emotions developers are experiencing right now. The current wave of excitement is great for Apple but why is the developer community so thrilled about the announcement?

Because they know any one of them can participate in making Swift better. Swift 2.0 will already include new language features like Error Handling Mode, protocol extensions, and swifter SDKs. Developers are excited because they’re already imagining the possibilities of what could be released in the next update after they’ve been allowed to get their hands on (and in) the programming language. In addition, developers will be able to repurpose the language to do whatever they want.

According to this blog post by Apple, Swift 2.0 will be released under an OSI- permissive license later this year, the latest version of Swift can be downloaded from the iBooks Store, and more information regarding the open source project can be found here.