Ask Slashdot: Objective C Vs. Swift For a New iOS Developer?

RegularDave writes: I'm a recent grad from a master's program in a potentially worthless social science field, and I've considered getting into iOS development. Several of my friends who were in similar situations after grad school have done so and are making a healthy living getting contract work. Although they had CS and Physics degrees going into iOS, neither had worked in objective C and both essentially went through a crash courses (either self-taught or through intensive classes) in order to get their first gigs. I have two questions. First, am I an idiot for thinking I can teach myself either objective C or Swift on my own without any academic CS background (I've tinkered in HTML, CSS, and C classes online with some success)? Second, if I'm not an idiot for attempting to learn either language, which should I concentrate on?

Comments

No idiot.Go with ObjC

[Henriok]

You are not an idiot for going for this. There's a vibrant market out there for products based on these languages, with a great community and it serves at least two plattforms which by all accounts won't be going away anytime soon. I would go for Objective C, since it's a more mature language, with lots of good documentation, learning materials, and all the frameworks in iOS and OSX is using this. Swift is still finding it's way.. so while you are learning ObjC, Swift will mature, and you will be established when the time comes for Swift. Let the bleeding edge developers work out the kinks first.