[tweet https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/565001293975257091]
Wil Shipley, a developer whose association with Apple began with a contract for NeXT, has posted two tweets in praise of Swift shortly after Apple’s “significant update” to the programming language.
Shipley says he feels the same way about Swift that he did when he first saw Cocoa on the NeXT platform, and that Objective-C is a “crapshack” of a language in comparison.
The developer co-founded The Omni Group in 1991, one of the few companies to create apps for NeXT and eventually OS X. He won a record five Apple Design Awards while at Omni, winning three more at the second company he founded, Delicious Monster. All of Delicious Monster’s other staff were later hired by Apple.
Shipley spoke at WWDC in 2005 and 2007, and was listed as one of the most influential members of the Mac community by MacTech Magazine for two years running.
While Swift has been very well received by other developers, its rapidly-changing nature does pose some challenges. New versions are backwards-compatible, but developers have to make changes to code in order to fully support new versions of iOS.
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Swift has a lot of potential. It’s the future – especially for Apple’s software.
Actually, the latest version (1.2) isn’t quite compatible with the prior version (though Apple provides a tool to help migration).
Like Objective-C Swift will evolve, 1.0 was very very rough (I mean like sand paper on you bum). 1.2 has reduced the grit number a bit but still has an uncomfortable feeling. My guess is when 2.0 comes up it will be smooth as silk but until then it will be a bumpy ride.
My question is, will Apple ever take it beyond native. There are groups/companies fighting to replace JS as the “web language”, curious to see if Apple has its sights set on that.
Building it into Safari would not be enough. Apple would need to convince Google and Microsoft to incorporate it into their browsers. I think they would be reluctant to play along.