About a year ago, I started learning how to code in Swift, Apple’s app development language. The idea was to eventually be able to build my own iOS apps from scratch and rediscover the fun of coding.
After a while, though, I began to lose interest. My last coding practice was almost 20 years ago when I taught myself HTML and CSS, and getting back into the mindset was hard. I also didn’t have a specific app goal in mind, meaning the drive to push through the tough sections wasn’t there.
For all the hyperbolic talk of how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to upend the entire world, this is one area where I think AI could have genuinely helped me. Things might have been different if I’d had an AI assistant to help me write code for parts I was stuck on. Maybe with that, my coding journey wouldn’t have ended quite so, ahem, swiftly.
Funnily enough, this kind of coding assistant is exactly what Apple has said it will soon add to Apple Intelligence. The feature is called Swift Assist and Apple has pledged to build it into its Xcode coding app. The idea is it can be used to generatively write sections of code for you. All you have to do is enter some natural language prompts and Swift Assist will create functioning code based on your input.
Missing in action
Apple introduced Swift Assist at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2024. But there’s just one problem: it might be vaporware. Either that or it’s so far from being ready that Apple is apparently buying its head in the sand and pretending it doesn’t exist, because Swift Assist is nowhere to be seen.
For instance, at WWDC 2024, Apple said Swift Assist would be coming “later this year,” implying that it was somewhat near completion. Yet the feature has never appeared in any Xcode or macOS beta and, as developer Michael Tsai recently pointed out, it isn’t even mentioned in the release notes for the latest Xcode 16.3 beta 2. With WWDC 2025 just three months away, time is running out for Apple to show us something solid.
The frustrating thing about the whole Swift Assist debacle is that it sounds like a brilliant idea. Apple said it would have an intimate knowledge of the Swift coding language and the company’s latest APIs, which many other AI tools struggle with. It might be able to suggest new ways of working if you’re stuck in one line of thought that isn’t working — a problem I often found when coding myself.
As well as that, Swift Assist is meant to run in the cloud, yet Apple said your code is never stored on its servers and “Apple doesn’t use it for training machine learning models.” That’s particularly important when you’re dealing with custom code and AI models — a potentially risky combination.
Apple rival OpenAI recently showed that ChatGPT will be able to integrate right into Xcode, writing code based on your natural language prompts, just as Swift Assist is intended to do. Google’s Gemini AI can also perform similar tasks. But with OpenAI and Google, there’s the risk that your proprietary code is being absorbed and used to train the model, which could lead to code leaks. With Apple, on the other hand, privacy and security are priorities.
Another delayed AI feature
Swift Assist seems to have fallen off the face of the earth and Apple hasn’t even mentioned it for months. Really, this seems to be emblematic of Apple Intelligence, where the missing and botched features are racking up. The delay to enhanced Siri abilities is just the most recent example.
But the delay to Swift Assist is particularly painful to me because I can see how it might have helped get me out of the rut that doomed my past attempt to learn Swift. Sure, I could use ChatGPT instead, but privacy is important to me. Knowing that my code won’t be feeding some faceless AI for who knows what purpose is important to me.
Hopefully, Apple is still working hard on Swift Assist, and I have my fingers crossed that we’ll see it sooner rather than later. It could be a great tool for all developers, whether they’re experienced old hands or budding newbies. But Apple really needs to get a move on before rivals like ChatGPT offer the same functionality without any of the privacy protections.