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I shipped my first Swift App with version 1.2, and have written or helped write a half dozen since. Anyone who is still using Objective C and dealing with dangl

I shipped my first Swift App with version 1.2, and have written or helped write a half dozen since. Anyone who is still using Objective C and dealing with dangling pointer bugs and difficult to maintain code is missing the point that most software development is bug fixing and maintenance. I never have the IDE crash and haven't for the last year+, never have problems with compiler bugs. Autocomplete is fine, compile times are ok, and the changes for each version have almost always been automatically converted for me. Refactoring would be nice. A faster compiler would be very nice, but there are build settings (see Uber lead engineers recent blog) that can massively improve build times in large apps.

nicky0 9y ago
In what ways is objC difficult to maintain, and in what ways is Swift easier to maintain than objC? I look forward to the magical bug free future when I switch to Swift.
- valuearb 9y ago
  If you actually believe I offered you a magical bug free future, can you at least pay me for it? Swift is far more readable and a bit more concise than objective c, that makes it more maintainable. The bigger win is of course optionals, which, (if you embrace them properly), can mean your app will never have a dangling pointer or runtime crash from a nil pointer. I spent nearly 20 years writing object oriented C and Objective C apps for personal computers and phones, and dangling pointer crashes were the biggest possible sinkhole of time, and worse degradation of product quality. I can't imagine ever going back to objective c.
  - nicky0 9y ago
    Language features to eliminate sources of bugs I can get behind.