Re: Need for Swift
Re: Need for Swift
- Subject: Re: Need for Swift
- From: Carl Hoefs via Cocoa-dev <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 11:25:54 -0700
> On Oct 12, 2019, at 9:24 AM, Charles Srstka via Cocoa-dev
> <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>> On Oct 12, 2019, at 10:55 AM, Pier Bover via Cocoa-dev
>> <email@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Yeah I think Apple saw Obj-C as a barrier for developer adoption. I don't
>> think that's too far from the truth considering the emphasis on teaching
>> Swift to young devs, Playgrounds, the marketing about teenagers making
>> their first app, etc.
>>
>> Swift has its quirks but most people around me prefer it over Obj-C too,
>> even experienced devs. From StackOverflow trends and other metrics as soon
>> as Swift was announced the popularity of Obj-C declined steadily even when
>> it was clear Swift was still not ready for production:
>>
>> - https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/objective-c/
>> <https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/objective-c/>
>> - https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=objective-c
>> <https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=objective-c>
> Swift’s first few versions were awful, but the community has been very
> responsive in responding to developer feedback and what we have now is really
> quite a nice language, possibly the nicest I’ve used. The string nil checks,
> in particular, are something I’ve become a believer in, especially when
> spending a bunch of time trying to debug an issue while writing projects in
> other languages that turns out to be a nil showing up somewhere where we
> didn’t expect it.
>
> The main quibble I have with it is the Objective-C bridge, which contains
> much more magic than I’d prefer, and of course certain legacy issues that
> come along with having to use the Objective-C frameworks (hello, autorelease
> pools). When writing cross-platform code on Linux or something, these
> complaints are of course moot. I hope they release a Windows version at some
> point; I’d really like to see Swift gain more acceptance as a general-purpose
> programming language.
With respect to Swift/Obj-C preference, I think it may ultimately come down to
a mindset issue.
I see Computer Science students here falling into two groups. The group that
likes Swift generally likes scripting languages, Python, and the like. The
group that likes Obj-C sees Swift as being "arbitrarily syntactical" with the
syntax of the language getting in the way of programming. (There is a third
group that likes both languages, but it is very small.)
I can understand where both camps are coming from. A psychologist explained
this difference in orientation as one of "convergent vs divergent" thinking,
and most people are mostly one way or the other.
-Carl
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