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Picking up Swift in 2024 seems like a bit of a sucker move if I’m honest. A language that only runs on a tiny fraction of hardware, has crappy documentation, h
by mdhb 3y ago
Picking up Swift in 2024 seems like a bit of a sucker move if I’m honest.
A language that only runs on a tiny fraction of hardware, has crappy documentation, has poor interoperability, a questionable developer toolchain that only runs on one platform and then to top it off anything you want to release with it basically has to go through an extortion racket where the worlds richest company is going to take 30% of your revenue and has the ability to shut you down at any point, for any reason and provides no meaningful recourse.
Honestly it’s a terrible choice.
- simonbarker87 3y agoSwift the language is open source and runs on pretty much anything. Also it’s quite a nice language to work with and developing native iOS apps is an enjoyable hobby. I wouldn’t want to tie my pay cheque to it though for sure.
- frizlab 3y agoSwift runs on microcontrollers now; you gotta update your knowledge. https://www.swift.org/blog/embedded-swift-examples/ https://www.swift.org/blog/embedded-swift-examples/
- Kon-Peki 3y agoBasically, anything that comes from a swift.org link is cross-platform and will run perfectly well just about anywhere. If you've got something coming from developer.apple.com it will be specific to the Apple ecosystem. And of course this learning resource is Apple-specific since it is coming from developer.apple.com.
- gdubs 3y agoI've built my career on Apple platforms and honestly this is basically what people have said about it since the beginning. I'll offer a counter and say that if you like the Apple ecosystem, there's never been a better time to get started. SwiftUI is an amazingly great way to build apps – and again, I've been doing this for a very long time so I'm speaking from experience here. For smaller developers, the revenue share can be as low as 15%. Also, for anyone weighing the decision keep in mind that while iOS may not represent the largest marketshare in the world, their users are well known to spend more money on the platform compared to other platforms.
- _factor 3y ago“As low as 15%” Great! That’s so much cheaper than the 0% you can get on other platforms. This used to be acceptable when Apple was innovating and providing extra value, today it doesn’t fly.
- frizlab 3y agoYou’re really delusional if you think you can get 0% on any platform ever…
- _factor 3y agoLet’s do a test. Write a hello world application and make a subscription for it for $1/mo. Publish it in git and offer it on the web, Windows, iOS and Android. Beyond your time investment, which platforms costs more than $0?
- frizlab 3y agoAll of them.
- _factor 3y agoI think you’re mistaken in regards to Apple. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/01/17/apples-decision-to-charge-27-commission-on-external-payments-draws-criticism/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/01/17/apples-...
- frizlab 3y agoFirst iOS support 2 platforms since iOS 2: the web and the App Store. You deploy for the web, you deploy for iOS. (Direct quotes from a WWDC.) Now assuming you’re talking about the App Store I don’t get your point anyway. For all platforms you’re gonna have to pay something at some point so all of them cost more than 0$.
- hbn 3y agoI mean, a tiny amount of overall unique hardware but the iPhone alone has been and continues to be the best selling computer of all time. And users of their hardware tend to be the most dedicated to the platform and willing to pay for software. And they have more money than the overall average "computer user". Nothing to brush off.
- abalone 3y agoAre you suggesting iOS developers should use another language (Flutter? Objective-C?), or that it’s a sucker move to become an iOS developer?
- runjake 3y agoI think they did a pretty good job of explaining that they meant the latter.