21–30 of 160 posts
I use Objective C. And I'm a Web Developer, but I learned it years ago and still use it because Cordova uses it. I make the bridges from Cordova to Swift using Objective C wrappers around functions, but choose to write the actual implementations in Swift. Kind of like I code HTTP handlers as the "controller", and then call from there to PHP classes as a "model".
do you use WebObjects at all?
I have really tried to like Swift, and with new projects I do tend to use it, but legacy projects in Objective-C still make me smile that I get to go back to the old familiar language. I also like its interoperability with C++ through Objective-C++.
All relevant obj-c libraries provide an auto-generated native swift interface, and you can even ‘import objc’ if you fancy doing some obj-c runtime stuff – such as swizzling – and still write in Swift.
I wouldn’t expect to see and/or use it for anything but the most esoteric of use cases these days.
I use Objective-C exclusively (no Swift) in my App Store apps. I wrote a Swift app for a hobby/free project a few years ago and regretted it. They changed the language and deprecated some of my code, which isn't easily replaceable without a significant rewrite. The project now compiles only in Swift 4 and will die when Swift 4 support is removed from Xcode. I see no reason to use Swift. The compiler is slower and bug…
For example OCR - you can use the old low quality Vision API but the new ImageAnalyzer can’t be accessed via ObjC and requires custom bridging. More and more new APIs will be Swift exclusive
How is Swift's interop with C++ nowadays? Obj-C's seamless interop with C++ was (is?) the key advantage.
Got my start in Objective-C back in the 2000s tinkering with OS X apps and used it at work for writing iOS apps from 2015-2017, but I embraced Swift pretty quickly (IIRC I started to take it seriously around 2.x).
It required significant shift in mental models, but having so much more built into the language (needing fewer dependencies is never ever a bad thing, especially when using CocoaPods), less silent breakage, optionals, no awkwardness from having to maintain C compatibility, no need to maintain header files, etc was a big deal for me.
These days if I’m using it it’s in personal projects to swizzle or access private APIs or in super simple projects that don’t really benefit from Swift’s frills. Aside from that, some projects still have Obj-C dependencies which I’ll need to delve into the source of to debug issues occasionally.