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When I interviewed at Apple I talked about Objective-C vs Swift with multiple developers. Most seemed to indicate that due to the millions of lines of code alre
by BinaryIdiot 11y ago
When I interviewed at Apple I talked about Objective-C vs Swift with multiple developers. Most seemed to indicate that due to the millions of lines of code already written in Objective-C that they, at least personally, were highly unlikely to rewrite them in Swift because it currently works and it's not worth the change over from a product standpoint. In fact a couple of time seemed hesitant that Swift was the future when I talked to them about it.
I understand not wanting to rewrite millions of lines of code but I feel like they should at least want to make a slow transition of at least many of their apps to Swift (since it can bind with Objective-C it's not like it has to be done all at once; it could be something where they spend a small percentage of time doing off and on). After my interview though I got the impression, at least from the developers I talked to, that they will probably never use Swift unless they have to.
Edit: I would like to point out, in case it's not obvious, that my case is purely anecdotal. Reading responses here and searching around Google is seems many inside Apple are excited about it which could very well be more than the people not excited about it. Still, I'd like to see some more platform support as it appears small at least to me looking from the outside.
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- pilsetnieks 11y agoOne would assume that their own people are already quite experienced in Objective C, and there is little benefit to them in switching to Swift. As long as Apple keeps supporting Objective C, why should the people already proficient in it change? It just isn't practical. However, Swift is invaluable in attracting new developers who are unlikely to take up Objective C.
- vbezhenar 11y agoI don't like Swift and I like Objective C much more. I learned Swift, so I can read it, but I'll use Objective C whenever I can. May be there are more people out there with similar point of view.
- alextgordon 11y agoYeah as nice as Swift is, Cocoa was designed for Objective-C. e.g. -[NSBezierPath setLineDash:count:phase:] takes a C array in Objective-C, but an UnsafePointer<CGFloat> in Swift. Apple needs new API interfaces for their new language, and that will take time.
- SneakerXZ 11y agoIf you use this API very often from Swift you can introduce nice wrapper around it. It would be better to see these issues by Apple but I think they are minor and Swift overweights with its benefits.
- bitserf 11y agoThis will improve in Swift 3.0, via an improved mapping of Cocoa APIs into Swift (naming wise): https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0005-objective-c-name-translation.md https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa... At some point in the future I imagine we would also see native Swift APIs.