When comparing LiveCode vs Swift, the Slant community recommends LiveCode for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” LiveCode is ranked 35th while Swift is ranked 36th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Fast to get results
Pro Cross-platform
Inside LiveCode's IDE you can build for OSX, Linux and Windows, and (making use of Xcode and the Android SDK) for iOS and Android too
Pro Extremely simple to get started
Single-click install of entire development environment, and all-in-one IDE makes it easy to go from visually layout out a user interface to writing code to power it to creating your own single-file applications.
Pro GUI-driven development
In LiveCode, you start by dropping GUI elements into place, then add the code that makes them function. This lets beginners see visual results right away, which is often more exciting (especially for young students). It also lets you focus on the user interaction before you get into the nitty-gritty of code implementation.
Pro Approachable yet capable language
Pro Highest ROI compared to other popular cross-platform development tools
Fluid production - from prototyping to delivery in one toolkit. With a high-level language that includes GUI controls as native elements, code more directly expresses the end-user experience. And the platform coverage is awesome, nearly unmatched.
Pro Modern syntax
Pro Swift is closer to other platforms
Apple’s modern programming language is easier to understand for non-iOS developers and minimizes time for additional explanations and clarifications. Moreover, Swift can be used as a script language. It is an interesting solution for the iOS community to unify writing of build scripts. At the time being iOS developers are split up in regard to this activity. Some of them write build scripts in Bash, others use Ruby, Python, etc. Swift gives an amazing opportunity to be applied to all iOS programming needs.
More details can be found here https://mlsdev.com/blog/51-7-advantages-of-using-swift-over-objective-c
Pro Works with Apple's Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks
Pro Can be used as a Just-In-Time language
Pro Inherent parallelism
Pro Low memory footprint due to reference counting
Pro Backed by Apple
Pro Performance speed comparable to native C
Pro Swift has some clever tricks up its sleeve
Due to having elements of a functional programming language. Things like 'map' and 'filter' for example.
Pro Uses LLVM compiler and Obj-C runtime allowing C, Objective-C, Objective-C++ and Swift code to run side by side within a single program
Cons
Con fringe use
Con Poor ecosystem
Not a mainstream programming language.
Con Swift is a moving target
They've released 1.2 so far, and 2.0 is coming soon. Every small update brings adjustments to paradigms (such as how to do type casting) that can be a little frustrating to absorb. Objective C was also constantly updating, however, but not at the same rate these days.