Swift's Evolution

#1

Post by carpeaqua » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 12:04 PM UTC

Re: Swift's Evolution

#2

Post by coldcode » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 12:53 PM UTC

I use Swift daily in a mixed application of both languages. I worked with ObjC since back in the NeXT days and I used to like the language but today nothing could ever drive me back. Xcode on the other hand is nightmare I despise daily but that's a different issue. The sooner ObjC goes away the better.

Re: Swift's Evolution

#3

Post by AlexeyBrin » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 12:54 PM UTC

The biggest problem Swift has is breaking changes from a version to another. Took me about 10 days to manually convert a Swift 2.5 project to Swift 3 to find out that Swift 4 will also introduce at least two breaking changes.

I'm all for progress and modern ideas in a programming language, just don't break my old code!

Re: Swift's Evolution

#4

Post by ebbv » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:02 PM UTC

The author says they lost a week of their life to the Swift 3 renaming but wasn't there a utility that helped with that?

I agree that Swift has seemed to been infected with the disease so many open source projects get; focusing on over polishing instead of big picture and innovation but it's still my favorite new language.

Edit: I missed the author mentioning the utility sucked. Sorry!

Re: Swift's Evolution

#5

Post by huxley » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:03 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #4

The author says they lost a week of their life to the Swift 3 renaming but wasn't there a utility that helped with that? I agree that Swift has seemed to been infected with the disease so many open source projects get; focusing on over polishing instead of big picture and innovation but it's still my favorite new language. Edit: I missed the author mentioning the utility sucked. Sorry!

He mentions it: "The migration tool caused more issues than it automatically resolved, leaving a manual migration as the only sane path forward. How that migration tool ever made it through QA is beyond me, but I'd have felt better if Apple just said 'good luck' instead of offering a half-baked utility."

Re: Swift's Evolution

#6

Post by clouddrover » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:04 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #4

The author says they lost a week of their life to the Swift 3 renaming but wasn't there a utility that helped with that? I agree that Swift has seemed to been infected with the disease so many open source projects get; focusing on over polishing instead of big picture and innovation but it's still my favorite new language. Edit: I missed the author mentioning the utility sucked. Sorry!

> but wasn't there a utility that helped with that?

Yes, but in the article he writes, "The migration tool caused more issues than it automatically resolved, leaving a manual migration as the only sane path forward."

Re: Swift's Evolution

#7

Post by sheeshkebab » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:06 PM UTC

And I thought 2017 is the year when I start a new app in swift... guess will be sticking to objc and react native depending on what makes sense where.

Re: Swift's Evolution

#8

Post by AlexeyBrin » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:08 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #4

The author says they lost a week of their life to the Swift 3 renaming but wasn't there a utility that helped with that? I agree that Swift has seemed to been infected with the disease so many open source projects get; focusing on over polishing instead of big picture and innovation but it's still my favorite new language. Edit: I missed the author mentioning the utility sucked. Sorry!

For small projects and if you don't use third party libraries (who doesn't ?) the Xcode migration assistant may work. Otherwise, manually doing the conversion is the law of the land.

Re: Swift's Evolution

#9

Post by protomyth » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:13 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #4

The author says they lost a week of their life to the Swift 3 renaming but wasn't there a utility that helped with that? I agree that Swift has seemed to been infected with the disease so many open source projects get; focusing on over polishing instead of big picture and innovation but it's still my favorite new language. Edit: I missed the author mentioning the utility sucked. Sorry!

The automated tool couldn't even automate the conversion of the Apple examples on their developer cleanly. Those examples were fundamental demonstrations (e.g. table with views), so that indicates a pretty big problem if you are trying for a complicated app. It also makes it difficult for people just starting.

Re: Swift's Evolution

#10

Post by eggy » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:13 PM UTC

Will Kotlin Native be able to compete with Swift on iOS? The syntax is very similar and it would make for a nice cross platform PL. I was holding off on Swift to see where it was going, but I'd like to add iOS to my dev targets. Objective-C was too verbose for me years ago, but I've heard it has changed a bunch.