4 ms·

What a mess Swift and Swift development has become! Im not throwing away my ObjC books any time soon! You could see this coming. It was a slow moving trainwreck

by msie 5y ago

What a mess Swift and Swift development has become! Im not throwing away my ObjC books any time soon! You could see this coming. It was a slow moving trainwreck. Like someone mentioned, we need a lightweight Swift. Also: too many cooks! This is what you get with such a big language. Chris has lost control.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
As someone who got their start in “real” software development with Obj-C, I’m not sure if I could go back to writing it full time after the past several years of writing Swift. Swift is far from perfect and could use a good refocusing, but all of the built in functionality that I’d have to pull in a third party pod for with Obj-C and no need to maintain header files are huge for me personally. Its strict typing has also saved me from idiot moments that frequently occurred when writing Obj-C many times and made sweeping refactors a lot more feasible.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  I miss message passing and the dynamic aspects.
- msie 5y ago
  Aesthetically, one of the things I didn’t like about Swift was the use of parameter names in the parameter list to ensure integration with the objc api. Made some function calls too verbose. One of the things we should have abandoned when we left objc. I admit it sounds silly but swift wasn’t a clean break as i thought it would be.
  - andrekandre 5y ago
    parameter names help you to see what those values are supposed to be though without parameter names, something like `func range(int, int)` can become dangerous because you dont know if the first parameter is the start and end or is it start and length? `range(start: int, end: int)` makes it clear at the call site what is going on and gives your brain enough info to not mess up the parameters (especially when refactoring or fixing bugs in existing code)
- newaccount74 5y ago
  I just wish they would fix basic usability of strings and protocols in Swift. Why can't I have a variable that has a protocol as type? Why can't I pass a substring to a function that wants a string? Why is string parsing so much harder than it should be?
  - tjalfi 5y ago
    > Why is string parsing so much harder than it should be? Mike Ash answered[0] this question back in 2015. [0] https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2015-11-06-why-is-swifts-string-api-so-hard.html https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2015-11-06-why-is-s...

by msie 5y ago

kitsunesoba 5y ago

As someone who got their start in “real” software development with Obj-C, I’m not sure if I could go back to writing it full time after the past several years of writing Swift. Swift is far from perfect and could use a good refocusing, but all of the built in functionality that I’d have to pull in a third party pod for with Obj-C and no need to maintain header files are huge for me personally. Its strict typing has also saved me from idiot moments that frequently occurred when writing Obj-C many times and made sweeping refactors a lot more feasible.

Apocryphon 5y ago
I miss message passing and the dynamic aspects.
msie 5y ago
Aesthetically, one of the things I didn’t like about Swift was the use of parameter names in the parameter list to ensure integration with the objc api. Made some function calls too verbose. One of the things we should have abandoned when we left objc. I admit it sounds silly but swift wasn’t a clean break as i thought it would be.
- andrekandre 5y ago
  parameter names help you to see what those values are supposed to be though without parameter names, something like `func range(int, int)` can become dangerous because you dont know if the first parameter is the start and end or is it start and length? `range(start: int, end: int)` makes it clear at the call site what is going on and gives your brain enough info to not mess up the parameters (especially when refactoring or fixing bugs in existing code)
newaccount74 5y ago
I just wish they would fix basic usability of strings and protocols in Swift. Why can't I have a variable that has a protocol as type? Why can't I pass a substring to a function that wants a string? Why is string parsing so much harder than it should be?
- tjalfi 5y ago
  > Why is string parsing so much harder than it should be? Mike Ash answered[0] this question back in 2015. [0] https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2015-11-06-why-is-swifts-string-api-so-hard.html https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2015-11-06-why-is-s...