Now in its third year, Swift – Apple’s new programming language – is already at version 3, has undergone significant development, and has now been fully open-sourced! It’s had one of the fastest adoptions of any new language ever (for reasons we’ll discuss) and has been turning the world of Apple development on its head. But what’s different about it? How does it fit in with other modern languages? Is it a functional language, as some rumours have suggested? Does it have any unique features? Should you care about it at all if you are not in the Apple eco-system (or even if you are)? We’ll look at answers to at all these questions and get a flavour of the language itself.