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I still love Objective-C. And to me—I'm so amazed that Apple added "Property Syntax" and "Properties". It's pretty easy to do much of this with Macros (which co

I still love Objective-C. And to me—I'm so amazed that Apple added "Property Syntax" and "Properties". It's pretty easy to do much of this with Macros (which could have been baked into the system) and the language stays very simple. You would have 2 lines of code per property but one fewer concept—and I think that is a much more important factor. To me—this was not the right way to add sugar.

bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
Yeah, no macros in Swift is a bit of an odd choice. It means that every would-be macro has to go through the language evolution process and be blessed by the Swift team. You can't release macro-like functionality, such as Rust's serde, without support from Apple.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  It’s certainly something that they want. I suspect it’ll be added someday in a major release.
- cudgy 5y ago
  Write your own preprocessor?
lenkite 5y ago
As someone who started learning Objective-C only after Swift become firmly established, I have to say I strangely like the language. I picked it up fast and have had no issues with adding features to a legacy codebase. When I started, I thought it would be some complicated beast, but no - its a reasonably simple and elegant C superset with the only disadvantage of some extra verbosity. (but Apple API's suffer from verbosity as a principle) I have to wonder: why did Apple create Swift ? Objective-C is quite nice, especially for C/C++ programmers. With Objective-C++, interop with C++ libraries is also terrific. Swift offers nothing like this yet.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Chris Lattner has mentioned that in a couple of interviews, there is a limit how much they could improve Objective-C towards being a safe systems programming language, exactly due to its C heritage.
- Someone 5y ago
  > I have to wonder: why did Apple create Swift? They wanted a safe, performant language that interoperates with Objective-C. Safety gets them fewer vulnerabilities, interoperability means they can gradually decrease (Objective-)C usage. Also: - opinions on the nicety of Objective-C differ (but the only arguments I’ve heard why it would be bad more or less are “I don’t like the syntax” and “it’s verbose”, both of which, IMO, are weak. Both, IMO, are acquired tastes. I don’t think anybody is born preferring terse K&R C, for example. - as you probably know, work is being done on C++ interop (https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/main/docs/CppInteroperabilityManifesto.md https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/main/docs/CppInteroperab...), so that may improve.
- ksec 5y ago
  >I have to wonder: why did Apple create Swift ? I asked this many times over the years, even in this thread [1]. Still no concrete answer. I still think overall it is a distraction. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30418197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30418197
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Plenty of Chris Lattner interviews answer that question. https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript
    - ksec 5y ago
      I know Chris lather's intention. And I have read and listen to all the interview he did. I think the question should be, Why was it necessary for Apple to bet on Swift. Something I dont think Bertrand Serlet or Avie Tevanian would have done.

bobbylarrybobby 5y ago

Yeah, no macros in Swift is a bit of an odd choice. It means that every would-be macro has to go through the language evolution process and be blessed by the Swift team. You can't release macro-like functionality, such as Rust's serde, without support from Apple.

saagarjha 5y ago
It’s certainly something that they want. I suspect it’ll be added someday in a major release.
cudgy 5y ago
Write your own preprocessor?

lenkite 5y ago

As someone who started learning Objective-C only after Swift become firmly established, I have to say I strangely like the language. I picked it up fast and have had no issues with adding features to a legacy codebase. When I started, I thought it would be some complicated beast, but no - its a reasonably simple and elegant C superset with the only disadvantage of some extra verbosity. (but Apple API's suffer from verbosity as a principle) I have to wonder: why did Apple create Swift ? Objective-C is quite nice, especially for C/C++ programmers. With Objective-C++, interop with C++ libraries is also terrific. Swift offers nothing like this yet.

pjmlp 5y ago
Chris Lattner has mentioned that in a couple of interviews, there is a limit how much they could improve Objective-C towards being a safe systems programming language, exactly due to its C heritage.
Someone 5y ago
> I have to wonder: why did Apple create Swift? They wanted a safe, performant language that interoperates with Objective-C. Safety gets them fewer vulnerabilities, interoperability means they can gradually decrease (Objective-)C usage. Also: - opinions on the nicety of Objective-C differ (but the only arguments I’ve heard why it would be bad more or less are “I don’t like the syntax” and “it’s verbose”, both of which, IMO, are weak. Both, IMO, are acquired tastes. I don’t think anybody is born preferring terse K&R C, for example. - as you probably know, work is being done on C++ interop (https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/main/docs/CppInteroperabilityManifesto.md https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/main/docs/CppInteroperab...), so that may improve.
ksec 5y ago
>I have to wonder: why did Apple create Swift ? I asked this many times over the years, even in this thread [1]. Still no concrete answer. I still think overall it is a distraction. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30418197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30418197
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Plenty of Chris Lattner interviews answer that question. https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript
  - ksec 5y ago
    I know Chris lather's intention. And I have read and listen to all the interview he did. I think the question should be, Why was it necessary for Apple to bet on Swift. Something I dont think Bertrand Serlet or Avie Tevanian would have done.