Here’s the Deal

Swift vs C#

77 57

66 54

When comparing Swift vs C#, the Slant community recommends Swift for most people. In the question“What programming language has the best syntax?” Swift is ranked 23rd while C# is ranked 27th.

Specs

PlatformsMac, Linux

PlatformsWindows, Linux, Mac, Web, Android, iOS

Current Stable Version10

Language typeInterpreted

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What programming language has the best syntax?

What are the best languages to develop mobile games?

Pros

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

Pro
Versatile

.NET offers rich functionality.

Pro
Visual Studio

The Visual Studio IDE offers one of the best development environments. The Community Edition and Visual Studio Code can be used for free.

Pro
Forms

Can be designed visually with the Visual Studio designer for traditional Windows forms, WPF, or Web forms.

Pro
3rd Party support

Lot's of tools and libraries available.

Pro
Can be used in a variety of fields

With Xamarin for Mobile (ios, android),
with .net core asp for server (linux, windows),
with .net core for desktop (windows, mac),
with mono for desktop (windows, linux),
with blazor for web client with webassembly.

However, it is not considered top for any of those categories, but it is top choice for Windows desktop with .net framework and top choice for Unity.

.net 5 will unify frameworks similar to JVM (just one).

Pro
Cross-Platform

Runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Pro
Supported By Microsoft

Constant updates and bug fixes to many popular frameworks, as well as great first-party support from Microsoft. This can be a con as well in certain circumstances.

Pro
It is a C like language

Being a C like language counts in favor for it as a general purpose programming language, given the ease of using existing skills to pick up this language easily.

There are other superior languages that could be used as a general purpose, such as: F#, Haskell, but the complexity of those languages, being functional, make them strange to the usual C Syntax.

C# is better than C whenever garbage collection, Objects, classes, data access, are needed. But C is going to be the choice when hardware access and performance are paramount.

Ad
Cons

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.