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> Tell me, iOS/OSX developers, why bother? Learning Swift really isn't a big deal. If you want to make something, then just make it. If you need to learn some

> Tell me, iOS/OSX developers, why bother? Learning Swift really isn't a big deal. If you want to make something, then just make it. If you need to learn something that might not be permanently useful: so what? Really, the knowledge you learn when developing an app is not "wasted" because the language is proprietary. The important parts will relate to design and architecture, not implementation details such as language used. Once you are a competent programmer you don't really "learn" new languages, anyway. You just jump in and use them, then look up reference when you get stuck. It's a trivial thing in the scope of building an application or a game. > Maybe the language will be a revelation and it'll be implemented by volunteers on Linux and what not. But until then, what's the point? What's the point of developing in Objective-C? For practical purposes it is a proprietary language. Yet it is used by many people and used successfully. The point is to build something that will be used. Your argument applies equally to many successful languages and development environments. I don't think Swift should really bother you, considering what it is designed to replace.

IanCal 12y ago
> Learning Swift really isn't a big deal. Often I feel that learning a new language is more like learning a local dialect or slang than a truly new language. Some languages are very different, but I'd wager that if you're looking to learn swift you've probably worked with another very similar language before. Sure there'll be some stumbling blocks, but you can get to a point of "this works, but probably isn't the best or fastest way for this language" fairly quickly by trying things and copy-pasting errors into google. > If you need to learn something that might not be permanently useful: so what? Indeed, and unless it's a really poor language you'll probably take something useful away from it. Maybe it'll be a language-feature that saves a lot of boilerplate that makes you wonder if you can implement in your own favourite language. Maybe it'll be an awesome package manager or module structure. Maybe it'll just be fun or make you think more about how different approaches work for different situations.

IanCal 12y ago

> Learning Swift really isn't a big deal. Often I feel that learning a new language is more like learning a local dialect or slang than a truly new language. Some languages are very different, but I'd wager that if you're looking to learn swift you've probably worked with another very similar language before. Sure there'll be some stumbling blocks, but you can get to a point of "this works, but probably isn't the best or fastest way for this language" fairly quickly by trying things and copy-pasting errors into google. > If you need to learn something that might not be permanently useful: so what? Indeed, and unless it's a really poor language you'll probably take something useful away from it. Maybe it'll be a language-feature that saves a lot of boilerplate that makes you wonder if you can implement in your own favourite language. Maybe it'll be an awesome package manager or module structure. Maybe it'll just be fun or make you think more about how different approaches work for different situations.