Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++?
Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++?
- Subject: Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++?
- From: Roland King <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2015 12:02:46 +0800
>
> Pick out a few apps completely at random in the app store. Sort the
> reviews by most-negative first. Last time I tried the vast majority
> complained of crashes, user interfaces that did not work or were
> sorely confusing or end-user data loss. I held back an old version of
> Skype for years despite that it commonly crashed because so many
> complained that the new versions were far worse.
>
Which was one of my points about 20 posts up or down the thread, depending on whether you think threads go up or down.
There are a lot of not-very-good programmers out there. That is becoming more and more true with regards to the kind of skills required to write good C, or good C++ or good assembler. There are hoards of programmers who didn’t learn it, didn’t have to learn it, grew up with automatic memory management, garbage collection, typesafe languages and were taught modern programming paradigms. And there’s nothing wrong with modern programming paradigms either, they, like those which came before them, were a slow codification of good ideas and practices to make more reusable, more understandable, safer and quicker to write code.
When many of those programmers (and I’m going to make a massive sweeping generalisation based on my own experience) try to learn to write C, ObjC, C++ or assembler they hate it, they don’t get it and they do a terrible job with it. The result is exactly that, bad, crashy, leaky, slow, crappy applications; sometimes with security holes you could drive a small car through.
This is why Swift and languages like it exist, to make it easier for programmers to express their intent and harder for them to write leaky, crashy, insecure code and to be able to apply the programming techniques they learned to write code for the platform. There will still be lots of bad apps, because there are lots of bad ideas and lots of mediocre coders, but there should be fewer bad ones, more good ones and a lot fewer just winking out of existence when you press the start button.
If Swift actually delivers all the things in the list Quincey posted, it’ll be a great language, that’s a list of what’s-not-to-like. It doesn’t take too much searching either to find people for whom Swift has already been transformational, who are now able to write apps they couldn’t even get started with before. I’ve been unhealthily skeptical of much of that enthusiasm based on my bad start with the language, but decided to stop being a crusty old fart, pick it back up and see if I could learn how it was supposed to be used and why lots of people are loving it. Worst comes to worst I’ve learned something even if I never use the language again.
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| References: | |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Roland King <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Quincey Morris <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Graham Cox <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Michael David Crawford <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Carl Hoefs <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: "Gary L. Wade" <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Quincey Morris <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Carl Hoefs <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Rick Mann <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Language options: Objective-C, Swift, C or C++? (From: Michael David Crawford <email@hidden>) |