Apple's Federighi positions open-sourced Swift as 'primary,' scalable programming language

Apple has grand ambitions for its newly open-sourced Swift programming language, senior Software VP Craig Federighi suggested in a Thursday interview, including making it a "front to back" development option.

"We want everyone to learn Swift as their primary language, and we want — when developers invest in Swift — to be able to use it everywhere from scripting to apps for mobile down to writing code in the cloud," he told The Next Web. "We think the best way to enable all of that is to open source it."

That goal includes the enterprise world, where IBM has reportedly been "a major source" of feedback, and eager to port mobile apps to cloud services.

On the subject of Objective C — Apple's preferred language until Swift — Federighi claimed that it will still have a place.

"Objective C is forever," he said. "I don't think anyone should fear for the future of Objective C. We're going to continue to support Objective C for ourselves and the developer community.

"[Apple] has an investment in many many millions of lines of Objective C, and that's not going to change," he continued.

Swift has been available to developers since 2014, but until Thursday was limited to Apple platforms. The code can now be used to develop for Linux as well, royalty-free.