[jameskilton]

That's not why they built Swift.

Objective-C is a difficult language to work with and has decades of cruft. Swift is a start-over, but with Objective-C interop so you still have full access to the full existing APIs for OSX and iOS. Thus, the same boiler plate.

[matwood]

The thing is, understanding Obj-C was never the hard part. For example, understanding ARC, weak vs. strong (and now unowned [1]), and the various libraries is what took time and experience. Swift doesn't solve that at all and in fact offers its own oddities like the below:

“You indicate type methods for classes by writing the keyword class before the method’s func keyword, and type methods for structures and enumerations by writing the keyword static before the method’s func keyword.”

Excerpt From: Apple Inc. “The Swift Programming Language.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/jEUH0.l

I do think the new language is neat and will be fun to work in, but it doesn't solve the parts that tripped up many people when working in Objc.

[1]

    @lazy var asHTML: () -> String = {
        [unowned self] in
        if let text = self.text {
            return "<\(self.name)>\(text)</\(self.name)>"
        } else {
            return "<\(self.name) />"
        }
    }

Excerpt From: Apple Inc. “The Swift Programming Language.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/jEUH0.l

[martingordon]

Is there ever a time when you don't want a weak/unowned self in a block? Perhaps this should be made the default in Swift? (I understand that the Blocks spec requires all captured variables to be strong unless otherwise specified.)

[BugBrother]

>>understanding Obj-C was never the hard part.

It seems important for traction to make the beginning learning curve non-steep. See PHP, Python, etc.

[fit2rule]

>>Swift is a start-over

For me, Lua+LuaJIT+C/C++ as a cross-platform solution to everything is a start-over, and it gives me all kinds of things I don't get from Swift, one of them is the ability to make decisions for myself about how the basic structures of the application are going to be managed and under what conditions, either in the VM as needed or out of it, and with whatever current frameworks you want to interface with (e.g. everything). Plus, LuaJIT for the win. Plus put it, simply everywhere. (On:iOS,Linux,OSX,Win,Web,&etc.)

Swift is interesting, but I will not again be swayed to the darkside of using platform-provider-provided-platforms to achieve platform nirvana, for that harness contains nails upon which to be pinned.

Planks can be assembled of many kinds, but mine is shiny enough without another dastardly developer-mindset-grab by a very, very serious cult.

(<<--MacbookPro'er)

[gress]

Feel free to do 10x the amount of work everyone else does.

[ihnorton]

Lua does seem to attract a number of prolifically productive people.