Swift vs. Objective-C

What is Objective-C?

Objective-C, a combination of C and Smalltalk languages, is an object-oriented language used by Apple for iOS and OS X.

What is Swift?

Swift is a completely new, high-level programming language designed by Apple a few years ago for its operating systems. The language has been growing ever since.

Comparison

1. Stability

Objective-C: It is highly stable, as it has been tested for years. So, it will not develop or change much more.

Swift: It is less stable, as compared to Objective-C, due to constant improvements. It is still growing.

2. Memory Management

Objective-C: It is more prone to memory leaks.

Swift: It has better memory management with no memory leaks, as it is type-safeprevents type errors in coding and memory-safeprevents vulnerabilities due to uninitialized or dangling pointers.

3. Simplicity

Objective-C: It is verbose and lengthy. It requires many more lines of code.

Swift: It is concise, with fewer lines of code required for similar commands. Its syntax is basic and simple.

4. Speed and Performance

Objective-C: As it uses runtime code compilation, its performance is slow.

Swift: It is a lot faster and gives high performance (almost as fast as C++) when compared to Objective-C. It was named Swift for a reason.

5. Readability

Objective-C: The syntax is harder to learn. It utilizes symbols and parentheses and takes longer to understand.

Swift: Its simpler syntax makes it easier to read, write and learn. It has English-like simple coding.

6. Maintenance

Objective-C: It requires two files to maintain code with manual synchronization of method names and comments.

Swift: It is based on a single file of code, which is easier to maintain.

7. Interactivity

Objective-C: It is harder to develop interactive apps.

Swift: It allows development of interactive apps and encourages interactive coding.

8. Dynamic Libraries

Objective-C: It uses static libraries and has no support for any dynamic libraries.

Swift: It supports dynamic libraries, which keep apps updated, reduce file size, and speed up overall performance.

9. Compilers

Objective-C: It has slow compilers.

Swift: It has low level virtual machine LLVM compilers that are faster and smarter.

10. Documentation

Objective-C: It has precise and complete documentation regarding each instruction, method, or error.

Swift: Its documentation still has margin of improvement and is constantly updated and growing.

11. Error and bug handling

Objective-C: It has null pointers that introduce NOPs, increasing complexity of error and bug handling.

Swift: It has quick fixes and bug recognition.