Dev.to
7/18/2026

The original title is: "Swift Classes vs Structs: Five Key Differences Every iOS Developer Should Know"
Original: Swift Classes — Everything You Knew About Structs Just Got More Complicated
Short summary
A beginner-friendly tutorial explaining the five key differences between Swift classes and structs: no memberwise initializers for classes, inheritance support, reference semantics (shared mutable state), and more. Uses anime character examples to illustrate how copying a class instance creates shared references rather than independent copies, which is critical for understanding SwiftUI behavior.
- •Classes lack auto-generated memberwise initializers unlike structs
- •Classes support inheritance; structs do not
- •Classes use reference semantics — copies share the same underlying data
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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