Earlier, developers used Objective-C to create apps for Apple’s platforms. Later, Swift emerged as the choice for many developers. How do Objective-C and Swift differ? Their comparison is as follows:
1. Objective-C and Swift were developed for different purposes
Brad Cox and Tom Love, two software engineers at Stepstone, developed Objective-C in the 1980s. They wanted to add object-oriented programming capabilities with the strengths of C, which is a procedural language. Cox and Love introduced syntax and semantics for this purpose.
Objective-C became a mainstay for programming on Apple’s platforms, and it retained this status for a long time. Developers in Apple used Objective-C to create operating systems like OS X and iOS. They also created the associated APIs using Objective-C.
Apple wanted a modern programming language for creating apps for its platforms. Chris Lattner collaborated with software engineers at Apple to create a new programming language. They created Swift in 2014. Developers can use this open-source language to create apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.