[weegee101]

That is extremely unlikely. Enough so that I would bet money on it.

Swift is targeted at the largest user base of the Obj-C language, the iOS developers. Obj-C will be around for a long time both for legacy purposes and because Swift doesn't interop with K&R C (unless that code has an Obj-C wrapper, like CoreFoundation), and C++ code. Since both Swift and Obj-C support using Cocoa libraries, any API added to Cocoa will be usable by both, but Cocoa is only one of many libraries in the Macintosh ecosystem.

Swift will become a replacement for the development the vast majority of people do, but that doesn't mean that Obj-C is going away. Apple has done nothing to indicate so; they've really been stressing the point that Swift is intended as a new tool to work along side your old one (Obj-C).

[pjmlp]

I remember Apple representatives promising to a room full of CERN researchers that the JavaBridge wasn't going away and how Java was a first class language for Mac OS X development.

[weegee101]

This is not even remotely similar to that situation. Obj-C is far more important & integrated than I think you realize.

[pjmlp]

I know Objective-C since 1999, when I had to port some software from NeXT to Windows, so I do know a few things about it.

From my point of view, many will jump to Swift if given the chance.

[gress]

You are misunderstanding - this isn't about which is better. Almost all new application code will be written in Swif, but swift doesn't bridge between C and the Swift/obj-c runtime, so Objective-C will continue to be required for writing the glue layer.

[pjmlp]

Yes it does.

https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...

Additionally, this is just version 1.0. So nothing rules out that if Apple sees the language being widely adopted, other improvements in the FFI area aren't made.

[gress]

I stand corrected, and your argument holds, however there is a great deal of objective-c code out there, so it will take a long time to go away.

[weegee101]

Yes, and I think people should head to Swift if it fits their needs. That is very different from Objective-C losing support however. Objective-C is not going away.

[scott_karana]

How many people actually wrote Cocoa apps in Java?

The only Java apps of the era that I remember used non-native UIs, and were painful.

Whereas I'd be shocked if Swift wasn't adopted wholesale by iOS developers.

[pjmlp]

This is not about the present.

Rather back when Mac OS X 10.0 was being released and Apple was unsure if developers would be willing to write Objective-C code.

They created their own JVM, with Objective-C runtime support (JavaBridge) and let the developers choose.

At the same time, Apple representatives did sessions at UNIX heavy user groups, like CERN, where they sold Mac OS X as a better BSD, and Java as first class language was part of the feature list.

As they saw developers were comfortable adopting Objective-C in their toolchains, the JavaBridge was dropped.