Ask Slashdot: Swift Or Objective-C As New iOS Developer's 1st Language?

macs4all (973270) writes "I am an experienced C and Assembler Embedded Developer who is contemplating for the first time beginning an iOS App Project. Although I am well-versed in C, I have thus-far avoided C++, C# and Java, and have only briefly dabbled in Obj-C. Now that there are two possibilities for doing iOS Development, which would you suggest that I learn, at least at first? And is Swift even far-enough along to use as the basis for an entire app's development? My goal is the fastest and easiest way to market for this project; not to start a career as a mobile developer. Another thing that might influence the decision: If/when I decide to port my iOS App to Android (and/or Windows Phone), would either of the above be an easier port; or are, for example, Dalvick and the Android APIs different enough from Swift/Obj-C and CocoaTouch that any 'port' is essentially a re-write?"

Comments

Obj-C

[occasional_dabbler]

The one really good thing that has come out of the Apple fashion parade is objective C. Jobs' legacy isn't all the shiny fashion crap, it is this powerful and really rather beautiful language. This is from someone usually branded a Microsoft shill. If you want to write iOS/OSX take advantage of the native tools.

Re:Obj-C

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, there is nothing powerful or beatiful about it. Programming in Obj-C is like using a hammer to catch butterflies. It works but it most certainly ain't beautiful.

Re:Obj-C

[taharvey]

Anyone who says 'X' language is crap, can safely be ignored.

Unlike our previous poster, though My opinion is that Java, is actually one of the least useful languages out there. It doesn't provide a higher level syntax than objC or C++, like the "better languages" Ruby, Python, etc. Nor does it provide the performance or memory footprint of systems languages like C, C++ or objC. It is bound by a runtime, that is meant to make it run-anywhere. Yet ironically the universal crown is going to javascript+HTML5, not java. Java in many ways is the new pascal, it is largely an educational language with a strong base in corporate intra-net applications.

You can use c, objC & C++ for decades to come. However Swift is very exciting (and I'm a embedded guy). It is the first serious language to come along that can challenge the C family of systems languages that I can remember. It has all of the native performance of C, the memory footprint advantages of reference counting, all of the syntactical goodness of ruby or python, the inherent parallelism of groovy and haskell, yet can morph into a JIT language in development with a very enticing hot-coding environment. With Chris Lattner & Apple backing it, it will be successful. I can't wait till it filters down to the open source space so I can use it in embedded systems.

Re:Obj-C

[Jeeeb]

Unlike our previous poster, though My opinion is that Java, is actually one of the least useful languages out there. It doesn't provide a higher level syntax than objC or C++, like the "better languages" Ruby, Python, etc.

Java doesn't provide a higher level syntax than C++/Obj-C but it does provide a much more easily parsed syntax. The result is lightning fast compilation, sane compilation errors and excellent tooling support. Auto-completion, powerfull refactoring, background compilation and powerful lint tools make for a very productive programming environment. Even C# doesn't have full proper background compilation yet. Intellisense is close but there are whole classes of compile time errors that it doesn't pick up.

Similarly stability has done a lot for the language. Java is one of the few languages were I'm confident that I could build a project I wrote ten years ago with no issues. C++ on the other hand... ugh! Just last week I shifted a project from VS2012 to VS2013 and had spend an afternoon fixing random code breakage because MS broke their Chrono libraries and their retarded compiler gave errors in the template definition in their header file rather than the actual lines breaking compilation. Not to mention the ball of fun that was trying to get the latest versions of our dependencies to compile... Fun stuff like the 64bit build for some reason produced 32bit obj files... In Java land I add a line to Maven or for Android drop a library in the libs file and add it to the dependencies... Presto, nothing more to think about.

It's also a very readable proramming language imo. Packages=directories and one public class per file make navigating Java code very easy. Types are obvious and code is simple to follow. I've worked in C++,Java,C#,Javascript,Python and also on my own time in C and Haskell. Out of those I'd say Java and C# easily have the best readability. (For the record Haskell has the worst by far imo.)

It is bound by a runtime, that is meant to make it run-anywhere. Yet ironically the universal crown is going to javascript+HTML5, not java.

I'm not sure if that is ironic. The Java runtime brings other benefits than cross platform compatibility. If I dereference a null pointer or use an index outside of array bounds, the Java runtime will give me a nice error telling me exactly what the error was, which line of code in which class caused it and what the sequence of calls that lead to the error was. Try doing the same thing in C++/Obj-C. If you're lucky the code will be running on a developer machine and you can hook in the debugger and if the code isn't too heavily optimized maybe even get the line of code it occured on. If you're unlucky the code is on a production server/client system somewhere and your stuck trawling through a log to find the error. (For the record record Haskell easily takes the title of hardest to debug language thanks to lazy evaluation.)

Plus it's not like C++/ObjC have no runtime. For example, if you don't have the right VC++ redistributable installed, you'll get nowhere trying to run C++ application compiled in VC++. Their runtime just doesn't include a JIT compilation stage (for better or worse)

Anyway here's the tl;dr: Java doesn't have exciting language features but it does have excellent tooling, excellent readability and is one of the easiest languages out their to debug. That too me is way more valuable than exciting language features. I prefer C# but I'm happy to work in Java instead.

Re:Obj-C

[Cyberax]

Java is just as fast in the RealLife(tm) as C++. Or more exactly, I'll write a fast-enough Java application faster than you'll write a third of it in C++. And Python for efficiency? Don't make me laugh.

Swift right now is a slow toy with incoherent semantics (lambdas and no GC, really?). It has _NO_ real advantages over Rust as they both use the same LLVM ecosystem for the backend. And I don't get where you got the idea that Swift uses any kind of JIT, it's a strictly compiled language like Rust. Compile speed of Rust is excellent (it's self-hosting, so there's a fair amount of code to compile) and by now Rust's design is mostly finished.

But of course, as we know, Apple has invented programming languages.

Re:Obj-C

[philip.paradis]

public class HelloWorld {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello, World");
    }
}

Doesn't really matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Learning the language itself is not that difficult. Learning the SDK and how things work in Cocoa-land is the important part.

For example, if you need to display a list of of items in a list, an UITableView will work the same regardless of your language choice. You will still need to understand the idiosyncrasies of working with UITableViewDelegate and UITableViewDataSource.

I would stick to Objective-C for the moment as there are more learning resources online.

If you 'speak' C

[angel'o'sphere]

Why not write it in C and ommit Swift/Objective-C?

Perhaps easier to port even, but honestly, if you want to use the Frameworks, try Swift.

There is a reason we have a flodded AppStore market with iOS Apps ... Apples tools are 30 years old, granted. But the rest of the industry simply did not catch up since 35 years.

Using a text editor to write code for a device like an iOS device, that simply displays the weather or a stock price is so ... 1960s?

Objective-C, if you don't know much about how iOS

[Anonymous Coward]

There are way more tutorials and examples for Objective-C than Swift.

either works if you take advantage of

[musikit]

since you are already a C programmer and are talking about maybe moving to android at a future time. i would write as much as possible in C and just bind to the UI with java/objc/swift.

take advantage of what you know. build wrappers around the java/objc code you will need to you can easily transport that to whatever platform you are on as long as it binds with C.

Why are you in charge of the decision?

[BarbaraHudson]

Although I am well-versed in C, I have thus-far avoided C++, C# and Java, and have only briefly dabbled in Obj-C. Now that there are two possibilities for doing iOS Development, which would you suggest that I learn, at least at first? And is Swift even far-enough along to use as the basis for an entire app's development? My goal is the fastest and easiest way to market for this project; not to start a career as a mobile developer.

This portends badly. You don't know enough about any of the languages currently in use on any platform, and your goal is "the fastest and easiest way to market?" The obvious solution is to give the job to someone else who knows what they're doing.

So, since that's not what's happening here (and any sane - and most insane - business would go that route), this is a case of "I've got a cool idea for a mobile app but I don't know anything about the platforms or how to code in the languages behind them, and I don't want to give any details about what its' performance and resource requirements are because someone might steal the idea." This is further borne out here:

If/when I decide to port my iOS App to Android (and/or Windows Phone), would either of the above be an easier port; or are, for example, Dalvick and the Android APIs different enough from Swift/Obj-C and CocoaTouch that any 'port' is essentially a re-write?

Why not just download the dev kits for Android and iOS and ask yourself if you can even understand the development documentation, the APIs, etc? The problem right now is yo don't even know enough to ask the right questions: you don't want to commit to something (objc vs swift) this early in your learning curve and then find out you made the wrong choice because you didn't take a month to pick up some basics.

Re:Neither

[Shadowmist]

Adobe flex. Cross platform, works on everything.

Your choice then... to be good on the platforms you write for, or evenly craptastic for everyone. Cross platform equals lowest common denominator. If you want to put out apps that people will call good... do the extra mile and code for that platform.

Re:C# using xamarin

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no no no.

Cross platform GUI application development has never, and will never work correctly. People buy different platforms because they behave differently, and because they like the behaviour of one platform over the other. Using a 3rd party hack job of a "cross platform" library only gets you into a position where you're making everyone unhappy by making it behave shiftily (compared to their platform) on all devices equally.

Re:Stay away from Objective-C

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try using ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) and the retain-release difficulties [are suposed to] disappear. The code to interface to the low level code is added (transparently) by the compiler when ARC is enabled.

Don't do apps.

[Animats]

You say you're an experienced embedded-systems developer. Those are rare. Stay with that and get better at it. There are already a huge number of people grinding out appcrap, more than the app market can support. Soon there will be a glut of former phone app programmers, if there isn't already.

Try to get in on the back end of the "Internet of things". That crowd is overrun with appcrap people and has no clue about embedded.