I know this article is a bit off-topic from our usual blog content, but I’m really passionate about the Swift programming language and wanted to share my thoughts.
Specifically, I want to talk about the future of Swift outside the Apple ecosystem, not just on macOS, iOS, or iPadOS, but in broader areas like server-side development, cross-platform use, and beyond.
So, What Exactly Is Swift?
Since childhood, I’ve been really interested in the Apple ecosystem. Although I wouldn’t call myself an Apple fan, I’ve always been fascinated by the design of Apple’s operating systems and devices.
My coding journey started with C++ and eventually transitioned to Objective-C. The main reason for this shift was my desire to develop apps for my phone (an iPhone 5s). At the time, I didn’t have a Mac, so I wasn’t as deeply involved in the Apple ecosystem as others. Still, I studied Objective-C theoretically, without working on any real projects, I know that’s not the best way to learn, but it was what I could do at the time.
When I was 16, I bought my first iMac, and it was a huge step for me. It felt like the perfect time to learn Objective-C, or so I thought. But even before I started coding in Objective-C, I was already fascinated by Swift. Fortunately, Swift’s syntax was somewhat similar to Objective-C, so the transition wasn’t too difficult. For me, Swift was much easier to read and write, and it came with a bunch of new features that made learning it more enjoyable and less troublesome.
Swift is a statically typed, compiled language designed for safety and speed. It offers a clean syntax, strong type inference, and memory management through Automatic Reference Counting (ARC). That’s why I decided to switch to Swift and focus on learning mobile app development with it.
Later, Apple released machine learning frameworks that integrated with Swift, making it efficient for developing machine learning apps. Swift also showed potential for backend development. However, there was one major issue, outside of the Apple ecosystem, it was largely unusable.
Swift’s Transformation into an Open Source Language
Swift’s open-source nature, released under the Apache 2.0 license in 2015, made it viable beyond Apple’s ecosystem. In my opinion, this was the most significant improvement to the language because it enabled Swift to run on Linux systems. There have also been efforts to support Windows, but for a long time, the experience remained limited.
Apple quickly added support for Linux, providing official toolchains and making it possible to run Swift on the server. Over time, the community also worked on bringing Swift to Windows. While it took a while to get there, now you can write Swift code on Windows too, thanks to projects like Swift for Windows and Visual Studio Code integration.
Thanks to this cross-platform support, Swift isn’t just limited to Xcode or macOS anymore. Developers can now write Swift on Linux, and even run Swift microservices in the cloud.
Two days ago, WWDC 2025 took place, and Apple officially verified the Swift extension for Visual Studio Code.
With all of these updates, Swift is now accessible on the top operating systems; macOS, Linux, and Windows (still performing best on macOS, as expected).
Server-Side Swift
Probably the most exciting area for Swift outside of Apple is server-side development. Frameworks like Vapor, Kitura (which is no longer active but played an important role), and Hummingbird allow you to build fast, type-safe web servers entirely in Swift. Vapor stands out the most, having grown into a solid ecosystem that offers everything from ORM tools like Fluent to templating engines like Leaf.
Even big cloud providers like IBM and Amazon have shown interest by offering tools or support for Swift backends in the past, which says a lot about its potential in the enterprise world.
This was great news for all developers who code in Swift because it lets us build everything using just one language, allowing us to focus more on projects and less on juggling different tools. Plus, Swift’s speed is impressive, it can be comparable to Go, depending on the operation.
Swift in Data Science and Machine Learning
Hey, we’ve finally reached the main topic of this blog! Of course, I want to help explain why Swift is such a great choice for machine learning apps within the Apple ecosystem. It might not be the best option for Linux or Windows apps, Python still dominates there, but Swift definitely deserves some credit.
Swift for TensorFlow (S4TF) may no longer receive updates, but it showcased Swift’s potential in machine learning, especially in differentiable programming. Researchers praised Swift’s performance, strong typing, and compiler optimizations, even though few in the community adopted it widely.
Today, Swift’s role in machine learning remains limited but active. Libraries like Swift Numerics and SwiftPlot continue to grow, and Swift’s speed makes it a strong option for high-performance computing, even though the tooling still needs improvement.
At WWDC 25, Apple introduced something huge: native Swift support for accessing on-device foundation models through the new Foundation Models framework. With just a few lines of code, you can now integrate smart features like text extraction, summarization, and guided generation, all running privately on-device without needing an internet connection.
And let’s not forget Core ML, which lets you easily integrate fast, optimized ML models into your apps. You can convert models from popular frameworks or use pre-trained ones, all with deep integration into Xcode.
Conclusion
It’s still a bit too early to say that Swift is fully ready for all-purpose use, but it’s definitely a multi-purpose language, and it’s continuing to evolve in that direction.
Right now, Swift really shines in building native apps within the Apple ecosystem and in server-side development. And who knows? In the future, we might start seeing Swift used more in gaming and AI applications as well.
I believe the Swift community is doing a great job of shaping the language for broader use. It might feel like a bit of a bet on the future, but I truly believe Swift has the potential to become one of the best languages for a wide range of purposes, if development continues on this path.
