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This is all quite interesting. I wonder if there are others in my boat, however, who were (in my case minor) iOS developers, and were initially excited by Swif

by cpr 12y ago

This is all quite interesting. I wonder if there are others in my boat, however, who were (in my case minor) iOS developers, and were initially excited by Swift. (I chatted with Chris Lattner at WWDC and thanked him for what looked in the first couple of days like an amazing win.) But after a while, I began to rebel against the idea of learning a whole new complex language and new environment just to keep doing iOS development. So in the end this nice clean breakpoint just pushed me back into the "open web" development camp. I'd like my efforts to work on all platforms. This isn't a plea for sympathy, honest, or an attempt to put down Swift, which looks like a great development--I'm just genuinely curious if others have had this experience.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
Swift won't be hard for current iOS developers to learn. The Cocoa API's are the big learning hurdle for iOS development and they are the same with Swift. Once you under stand the basics of the language, after building a couple of projects in it you will be up to speed. I see the sentiment that learning languages isn't hard here all the time and it's mostly true. If you know the fundamentals of programming and the API's well a new language shouldn't be an issue. Anytime I think of going into web dev full time (I do some, not much) I am daunted by the fact I need to know: HTML, CSS, Javascript, a server side language e.g. Ruby, SQL etc. etc. I know bits of each and can get by but it seems like a much more daunting thing to me than learning one language and set of API's that works on a device with very little fragmentation/variation in hardware capability/screen size.
- cpr 12y ago
  Oh, I understand it's not hard to learn enough to use it with existing Cocoa APIs--it's just that that to learn it deeply would require a major investment. I've learned dozens of languages (starting with Lisp-like systems) in my nearly 45 years in the biz, so Swift wouldn't be a big challenge. It's more a question of Why? at this point.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    Ah, ok. I get how it could be annoying to develop a deep knowledge of yet another language.
rsynnott 12y ago
> But after a while, I began to rebel against the idea of learning a whole new complex language and new environment just to keep doing iOS development. It's not really like you actually have to do that if you don't want to, though, at least for a few years. Objective C won't be going away for a long time.
gdubs 12y ago
So far it has felt very natural to me. Somehow, and probably largely due to the Cocoa/UIKit frameworks, it feels a _lot_ like Objective-C development. Things like safely unwrapping optionals, rather than the verbose respondsToSelector checks everywhere, feel like a big improvement.
jzzocc 12y ago
I saw Mattt introduce Alamofire at the New York iOS developer meet up and he actually expressed some concern over what seems to be a lot of blind optimism towards Swift in his talk.

by cpr 12y ago

k-mcgrady 12y ago

Swift won't be hard for current iOS developers to learn. The Cocoa API's are the big learning hurdle for iOS development and they are the same with Swift. Once you under stand the basics of the language, after building a couple of projects in it you will be up to speed. I see the sentiment that learning languages isn't hard here all the time and it's mostly true. If you know the fundamentals of programming and the API's well a new language shouldn't be an issue. Anytime I think of going into web dev full time (I do some, not much) I am daunted by the fact I need to know: HTML, CSS, Javascript, a server side language e.g. Ruby, SQL etc. etc. I know bits of each and can get by but it seems like a much more daunting thing to me than learning one language and set of API's that works on a device with very little fragmentation/variation in hardware capability/screen size.

cpr 12y ago
Oh, I understand it's not hard to learn enough to use it with existing Cocoa APIs--it's just that that to learn it deeply would require a major investment. I've learned dozens of languages (starting with Lisp-like systems) in my nearly 45 years in the biz, so Swift wouldn't be a big challenge. It's more a question of Why? at this point.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  Ah, ok. I get how it could be annoying to develop a deep knowledge of yet another language.

rsynnott 12y ago

> But after a while, I began to rebel against the idea of learning a whole new complex language and new environment just to keep doing iOS development. It's not really like you actually have to do that if you don't want to, though, at least for a few years. Objective C won't be going away for a long time.

gdubs 12y ago

So far it has felt very natural to me. Somehow, and probably largely due to the Cocoa/UIKit frameworks, it feels a _lot_ like Objective-C development. Things like safely unwrapping optionals, rather than the verbose respondsToSelector checks everywhere, feel like a big improvement.

jzzocc 12y ago

I saw Mattt introduce Alamofire at the New York iOS developer meet up and he actually expressed some concern over what seems to be a lot of blind optimism towards Swift in his talk.