> On Oct 12, 2019, at 10:55 AM, Pier Bover via Cocoa-dev > <cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com> wrote: > > Yeah I think Apple saw Obj-C as a barrier for developer adoption. I don't > think that's too far from the truth considering the emphasis on teaching > Swift to young devs, Playgrounds, the marketing about teenagers making > their first app, etc. > > Swift has its quirks but most people around me prefer it over Obj-C too, > even experienced devs. From StackOverflow trends and other metrics as soon > as Swift was announced the popularity of Obj-C declined steadily even when > it was clear Swift was still not ready for production: > > - https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/objective-c/ > <https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/objective-c/> > - https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=objective-c > <https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=objective-c> Swift’s first few versions were awful, but the community has been very responsive in responding to developer feedback and what we have now is really quite a nice language, possibly the nicest I’ve used. The string nil checks, in particular, are something I’ve become a believer in, especially when spending a bunch of time trying to debug an issue while writing projects in other languages that turns out to be a nil showing up somewhere where we didn’t expect it.
The main quibble I have with it is the Objective-C bridge, which contains much more magic than I’d prefer, and of course certain legacy issues that come along with having to use the Objective-C frameworks (hello, autorelease pools). When writing cross-platform code on Linux or something, these complaints are of course moot. I hope they release a Windows version at some point; I’d really like to see Swift gain more acceptance as a general-purpose programming language. Charles _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
