Ask HN: How many of you Apple developers still use Objective C?

Post by QuercusMax » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 8:40 PM UTC

spike021 wrote: post #90

runjake wrote: post #35

I've given up on Apple platform development, but I strongly prefer Objective-C over Swift for a variety of reasons, including elegance, compatibility, stability, etc. It's important to note that there's still tons of Objective-C written inside Apple to this day, perhaps more than Swift. What Apple pushes as what you should be using is often not what they are using internally, FWIW. Third-party developers are its true…

You could probably say the same about most large public orgs. For instance many Amazon teams don't even use modern AWS internally for their services. At least as of three years ago.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 8:41 PM UTC

sandofsky wrote: post #57

lapcat wrote: post #17

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…

As a counter-anecdote from someone who also runs their own company, I began dabbling in Swift in 2014. I held off on full Swift adoption until after the big API renaming that happened with Swift 3, so language migrations haven’t been a big deal. The compiler is slower, but I can still do a clean build in 43 seconds. Maybe I’ve had a good experience because I’m not working on a FAANG project with a million lines of co…

Post by Doctor_Fegg » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 8:47 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #32

wahnfrieden wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll have an increasingly harder time adopting new Swift-only APIs 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

I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Post by whartung » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 8:50 PM UTC

Post by lapcat » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 9:01 PM UTC

sandofsky wrote: post #98

lapcat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By using C everywhere, you can use an even faster compiler that doesn’t insert those calls for you. In the previous comment you said I should use objc_msgSend, now you say I shouldn't. Make up your mind. ;-) Anyway, I'm using AppKit and UIKit to write apps. The API is Objective-C. That's why I write Objective-C. Whatever the heck you're talking about—you appear to be confused, so I don't know what exactly you mean…

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