Swift is a relatively modern program language, appearing in 2014 as a replacement for Objective-C. Since then, it’s become a popular solution for programming apps across Apple platforms. That led [Yeo Kheng Meng] to a simple yet fun idea—porting Swift to the oldest Apple platform of all.

Yes, [Yeo] managed to build a development environment for Swift that targets the Apple II platform. Not just one machine, either—everything from the original Apple II up to the IIe and a little beyond. Now, the Apple II is very different from modern Macs and iPhones and the like, having debuted in 1977 with a 1 MHz 6502 CPU and a minuscule 4 KB of RAM. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use a modern language to develop for it!

[Yeo] does a great job of explaining how it all works, and how Claude Code and GPT 5.5 Codex were used to help piece things together. The compiler is set up to spit out bytecode that’s executed by a virtual machine running on the 6502. The target was to allow the setup to work on a standard 1977 Apple II from the factory, which would allow it to then run on subsequent models without issue. However, there is a small note— [Yeo]’s implementation requires the RAM to have been upgraded to 48 KB.

We love seeing modern stuff ported to the Apple II. This Portal port was a particular highlight.