Apple Announces Swift

Apple announced the Swift programming language at WWDC in June 2014 as a modern alternative to Objective-C for iOS and Mac development. Swift kept interoperability with existing Objective-C frameworks so developers did not have to rewrite entire applications.

The language introduced features such as optionals, type inference, generics, closures, and safer handling of null-like values. Optionals forced programmers to acknowledge when a variable might contain no value instead of allowing unchecked null pointers to spread silently through code.

Apple also introduced interactive Playgrounds for experimenting with Swift code. Over time, Swift replaced Objective-C as the preferred language for new Apple-platform applications, showing how a platform owner can migrate a developer ecosystem gradually by keeping old and new languages interoperable.