Swift Programming Language

Wow, it’s been a LONG time since I last posted.

Anyway, I’ve been holding a mental debate for the last few weeks about the new programming language, Swift, by Apple.  There has been a mix of opinions about it, a lot of excitement, but in general, many of the more veteran coders are continuing in Obj. C while they develop, with some dabbling in Swift on the side.

I, on the other hand, am NOT a veteran developer.  I have three small apps on the App Store, of which I’m very proud, but none of them are crying for anything new from iOS8, and none of them sell well enough that I need to worry much about an update.  I have no current projects on the board beyond the idea phase.  I am still in the learning phase of Objective C.  It seems I’m in an ideal place to learn Swift and use it from here on.

I think that’s the case.  I waffle back and forth – Swift is new and cool, but also still growing and changing, while Objective C, which I don’t know well, I at least know.  I agree with some commenters, that if you want to push an update or new app, Objective C is still the way to go, because it’s available and ready now, where Swift may still change substantially before you are able to ship something with iOS8.  I once again don’t know if that matters to me, but it makes me pause.  Of course, if Apple came out and said that they were going to stop supporting Objective C in six months or something, the decision would be easy.  They, however, are not doing that.  They may never do that.  Objective C may have a long and happy life ahead of it.  There’s just no way for us to know, but I’m betting at least a couple of years, probably more.

It’s a bit of a quandary, but dang, if I’m not happy to have the decision to make.  As I said before, I don’t have anything new coming down the pike soon, but I have ideas that are beginning to excite me, and I’m looking forward to making them into something that I can eventually create and release.  It’s hard to see which way is best, and there probably isn’t even an answer.  I just like the question.

By Bruce