Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ChrisMarshallNY 2093 days ago
I started writing Swift within minutes of it being announced. I released my first Swift app on the store just about fifteen minutes after the RC of Xcode was released.

I did a lot of ObjC, but I've enjoyed using Swift. When I create frameworks and modules, they are Swift-only (no ObjC headers), because I like to leverage native Swift stuff, like enums and whatnot.

But I am writing app code. I think ObjC is a better systems language, so I don't think it's going anywhere, any time soon. It's a lot safer than "raw" C.
1 comments
nardi 2093 days ago
If you mean Objective-C code with minimal usage of C functions/structs/etc., then IMO Swift is actually the better systems language. Cf. the just-announced System library.
link
ChrisMarshallNY 2092 days ago
I love Swift, and it would be a great systems language, but it is important for system languages to have some kind of "bare metal" interfaces, with solid, predictable binary expression. Even C generally needs to be implemented in some kind of specialized embedded form for a lot of tools.

To me, Swift is a fairly high-level language, and I like that. I cut my teeth on the bare metal, and don't really miss working at that level.

link
pjmlp 2093 days ago
That is the ultimate goal, yet stuff like Metal gets written in a mix of Objective-C and C++14, with Swift bindings.
link
nardi 2093 days ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd bet Metal is almost entirely C++ with a little Obj-C sprinkled on top for the API. And of course C++ is still a better systems language than Swift.

My point was that Swift is better than pure Obj-C for systems programming. Admittedly, that might be a poor comparison, since Obj-C was specifically built to be used alongside C as the systems language.

But yes, I think the ultimate goal is that Swift will be better than C/C++ for systems programming too. It still has a ways to go, and there are a lot of libraries that will need to be written, but I do think it's possible.

link
pjmlp 2093 days ago
> Metal is written in Objective-C, is based on Foundation, and makes use of Grand Central Dispatch to synchronize between the CPU and GPU.

https://www.objc.io/issues/18-games/metal/

C++ is used for Metal shaders.

link