Swift open source – let the revolution begin
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Swift open source – let the revolution begin
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Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#2Excellent summary.
I'm really happy that Apple open-sourced Swift in this way. However, most of the ~400 pull requests are fixes for single typos. I hope that managing the GitHub issues won't become too much of a burden for the main developers (those with write access to the repository).
Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#3Excellent summary. I'm really happy that Apple open-sourced Swift in this way. However, most of the ~400 pull requests are fixes for single typos. I hope that managing the GitHub issues won't become too much of a burden for the main developers (those with write access to the repository).
It's not a very hard problem to solve though. Just fix the typos, and don't introduce (many) new ones.
The people contributing those fixes are doing so because they want to contribute, and typo fixes are very easy to be certain about that it's an improvement (without a chance of introducing regressions, etc.).
Of course, as the easy-to-fix problems are eliminated, focus will shift to finding more meaningful ways to make improvements, or just using the language which has fewer problems as a result.
Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#4I'm excited about Swift but is there any reason someone who is not making money as an iOS dev but knows objective C well should drop everything in learn it (serious question)?
My initial opinion was swift does a lot of things much better, (no header files, new operators, etc.) but learning a new language takes a long time + it appears a majority of code is still in objC
Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#5I'm excited about Swift but is there any reason someone who is not making money as an iOS dev but knows objective C well should drop everything in learn it (serious question)? My initial opinion was swift does a lot of things much better, (no header files, new operators, etc.) but learning a new language takes a long time + it appears a majority of code is still in objC
sometime in the future, Apple will begin releasing swift-only APIs. it's unclear that one should "drop everything", but swift usage will only increase in the future. in addition, as a company, it will become difficult to hire new people if you don't try to move to swift at some point.
ymmv, of course. i'm new to iOS land and i write objective-c exclusively during my day job. that being said, the difficulty in iOS development (in my experience) is not in the language, but the APIs, abstractions, and patterns - and they are the same regardless of whether you're using swift or objective-c
Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#6I'm excited about Swift but is there any reason someone who is not making money as an iOS dev but knows objective C well should drop everything in learn it (serious question)? My initial opinion was swift does a lot of things much better, (no header files, new operators, etc.) but learning a new language takes a long time + it appears a majority of code is still in objC
sometime in the future, Apple will begin releasing swift-only APIs. it's unclear that one should "drop everything", but swift usage will only increase in the future. in addition, as a company, it will become difficult to hire new people if you don't try to move to swift at some point. ymmv, of course. i'm new to iOS land and i write objective-c exclusively during my day job. that being said, the difficulty in iOS dev…
The beauty of making Swift open source means that changes to the language will be influenced by the broader community. If Apple finds this kind of thing useful, then perhaps the APIs will get the same treatment and we'll start to see an improvement in the iOS dev experience.
Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#7Excellent summary. I'm really happy that Apple open-sourced Swift in this way. However, most of the ~400 pull requests are fixes for single typos. I hope that managing the GitHub issues won't become too much of a burden for the main developers (those with write access to the repository).
It's not a very hard problem to solve though. Just fix the typos, and don't introduce (many) new ones. The people contributing those fixes are doing so because they want to contribute, and typo fixes are very easy to be certain about that it's an improvement (without a chance of introducing regressions, etc.). Of course, as the easy-to-fix problems are eliminated, focus will shift to finding more meaningful ways to m…
Yeah, it's looks good on your GitHub profile to be a 'contributor' to Swift.
Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#8I'm excited about Swift but is there any reason someone who is not making money as an iOS dev but knows objective C well should drop everything in learn it (serious question)? My initial opinion was swift does a lot of things much better, (no header files, new operators, etc.) but learning a new language takes a long time + it appears a majority of code is still in objC
Learning a new language doesn't take a long time. If you can program, then picking up a new language is a matter of days especially if it's the same paradigm. If it's something radically different, I can't see why it should take more than a month. The only learning curve to swift would be it's standard library. But in this age of IDEs with auto competition and copious documentation that's not much of a program.
Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a very hard problem to solve though. Just fix the typos, and don't introduce (many) new ones. The people contributing those fixes are doing so because they want to contribute, and typo fixes are very easy to be certain about that it's an improvement (without a chance of introducing regressions, etc.). Of course, as the easy-to-fix problems are eliminated, focus will shift to finding more meaningful ways to m…
Yeah, it's looks good on your GitHub profile to be a 'contributor' to Swift.
This brings up an interesting problem to solve:
How to tell if something is a "real" contributor rather than someone who sends the occasional spelling fix. I imagine recruiters would be interested in some way to easily tell this.
Re: Swift open source – let the revolution begin
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's looks good on your GitHub profile to be a 'contributor' to Swift.
This brings up an interesting problem to solve: How to tell if something is a "real" contributor rather than someone who sends the occasional spelling fix. I imagine recruiters would be interested in some way to easily tell this.
All they have to do is ask them in the phone screen "So what did you contribute to Swift?"