[spacedcowboy]

Apple had a real winner with ObjC and AppKit. Swift is horrendously complicated for the benefits it offers over ObjC, and SwiftUI is a massive step backwards from AppKit.

Just MHO, and it’s not going to stop the juggernaut, but there’s just no appeal in moving there for me :( If (when ?) Apple drop ObjC, that’s the day I move to Linux

[blltprfmnk]

There were a lot of people actively complaining about ObjC in the lead-up to the unveiling of Swift. In fact I recall one prominent blogger in the iOS community begging Apple just a few months earlier to consider replacing it.

Unfortunately although Swift seemed promising at first, by the time Swift 3 rolled around a lot of people were actively frustrated and moved on from iOS development. Having actual experienced hands guiding that ship could have led to something great instead of the mess that is there today.

[jshier]

Apple will likely never drop Obj-C, but it's been a secondary language for years now. New frameworks are all written in Swift, Obj-C is only used for existing Obj-C codebases.

[frizlab]

Having written actual apps with AppKit, it is horrendously complicated for simple things.

Swift is incredibly better than ObjC on so many ways it’s just not comparable. I used it since day one and never looked back. (And I was deep into the ObjC ecosystem, having written very low-level frameworks, and having loved it.) Yeah, first versions of Swift were raw, but now it’s just THE language; I used for everything (obviously Apple soft frontend, but also the web, the backend, etc. Even android dev I would do with Swift though I do not have the occasion for now.)

Apple will never drop ObjC support IMHO. But most new frameworks will be Swift-only.

SwiftUI is a step backwards from AppKit in the sense that we lose control over what’s possible when using it exclusively. But 1/ it’s much simpler for doing simple things and 2/ we can drop down to AppKit when needed. All in all, it’s good that we have it.