Swift 3 Changes

As the apple / swift-evolution page on GitHub notes, Swift 3 should be ready later in 2016 with the goal of platform portability. Noteworthy for the programmer, Swift 3.0 refines language style including dropping some C-style syntax that doesn’t fit well. Coming from a C and Java background, I have two C-style writing habits that I must admit don’t really fit well in Swift.

• Removes ++ and – operators (proposal)
• Removes C-style for loop (proposal)

Since ++ and – doesn’t provide any in-line advantages, they don’t really do much besides allowing a programmer like me to type quickly by habit. For reading, it doesn’t save much space over += 1 and -= 1. I’m accustomed to writing for loops with the wonky semi-colons, but I’ve been getting into the habit of using shorter, more readable, syntax. Swift has for-in statement which is much easier on the eyes without all the wonky attitude.

Instead of:

for var i = 0; i < count; ++i {
  // do something 
}

Do this:

for i in 0 ..< count {
  // do something 
}

That second block looks nicer, doesn’t it?

Other changes for Swift 3 include the first argument label is no longer optional and minor naming changes like “sort()” to “sorted()” and “repeatedValue” to “repeating.”