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bjet767

Suspended
Oct 2, 2010
967
319
a lot of interesting comments here about swift verses objective C.

Here's my take and experience.

I started in the day with COBOL on punch cards, proceeded to learn the earliest dBase coding for the first PCs and hated it. It turned what were fast machines for the day into painfully slow processes. At the encouragement of a relative who worked for Bell Labs AT&T I taught myself original C and never turned back.

I dabbled with Assembly to improve certain hardware and screen speed issues with the PCs of the day. I was really happy when Microsoft introduced the foundation classes for C++ (it made writing for Windows a whole lot easier) and then came Objective C from the NEXT computer. At first I was a little annoyed that Apple did the Apple thing and deviated from from the C++ standard but after awhile I began to appreciate the small improvements that were made and now wonder why C++ hasn't adopted some of them.

Where's all this going? I like and believe in the structure of Objective C whose origins are 30+ years old from K&R C. Eliminating the brackets, semi-colons and all those types of things to me make the code less disciplined, readable and maybe even less portable.

I also like how Apple has improved the memory allocation and management in their compilers. It beats the old days of chasing down memory leaks and overwriting issues which would crash a program.

Now what do I think of Swift?

If one want's to be a programming professional for Apple products they must know both languages and be a master at one of them. Objective C will not go away in the near future and Swift is still maturing, but learn both and choose one.
 

1458279

Suspended
May 1, 2010
1,601
1,521
California
a lot of interesting comments here about swift verses objective C.

Here's my take and experience.

I started in the day with COBOL on punch cards, proceeded to learn the earliest dBase coding for the first PCs and hated it. It turned what were fast machines for the day into painfully slow processes. At the encouragement of a relative who worked for Bell Labs AT&T I taught myself original C and never turned back.

I dabbled with Assembly to improve certain hardware and screen speed issues with the PCs of the day. I was really happy when Microsoft introduced the foundation classes for C++ (it made writing for Windows a whole lot easier) and then came Objective C from the NEXT computer. At first I was a little annoyed that Apple did the Apple thing and deviated from from the C++ standard but after awhile I began to appreciate the small improvements that were made and now wonder why C++ hasn't adopted some of them.

Where's all this going? I like and believe in the structure of Objective C whose origins are 30+ years old from K&R C. Eliminating the brackets, semi-colons and all those types of things to me make the code less disciplined, readable and maybe even less portable.

I also like how Apple has improved the memory allocation and management in their compilers. It beats the old days of chasing down memory leaks and overwriting issues which would crash a program.

Now what do I think of Swift?

If one want's to be a programming professional for Apple products they must know both languages and be a master at one of them. Objective C will not go away in the near future and Swift is still maturing, but learn both and choose one.

I remember those dBase languages. Someone in college blew our project out of the water because their dBase compiler program did so much more than our native code Pascal program did.

Microsoft said Visual FoxPro was the future of business programming. Borland said Visual dBase the the future. Computer Assoc. said Visual Objects was the future. Others said PowerBuilder was the future...

They all were designed to make programming easier, improve productivity, yet they are all gone now.

Tough choices, life long learning is a requirement and going down a path that might be a dead end comes with the job.
 

srkmish

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 10, 2013
216
0
Guys, i had one more question. Is a macbook air 13 inch enough for ios development? What should be the minimum specs of the air for a smooth operation.
 

TheWatchfulOne

macrumors 6502a
Jun 19, 2009
838
972
Guys, i had one more question. Is a macbook air 13 inch enough for ios development? What should be the minimum specs of the air for a smooth operation.

I have an app in the App Store right now of which a good portion was developed using an 11" MacBook Air. It's my favorite machine that I've had so far and I have no complaints. So, if a 13" Air is the machine your want, it will certainly be enough for iOS development.
 

srkmish

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 10, 2013
216
0
I have an app in the App Store right now of which a good portion was developed using an 11" MacBook Air. It's my favorite machine that I've had so far and I have no complaints. So, if a 13" Air is the machine your want, it will certainly be enough for iOS development.
Cool. can you tell me the specs of your air?
 

bjet767

Suspended
Oct 2, 2010
967
319
I too have an app in the store which was almost 100% developed on an Air and rMB.

The Air was a 2014 11" 4 Gig 256 SSD. The rMB is the 1.2 256 SSD.

Why would you think the 13" Air not be suitable?
 

TheWatchfulOne

macrumors 6502a
Jun 19, 2009
838
972
Cool. can you tell me the specs of your air?

Yes.

Core i7; 8 GB RAM; 256 GB SSD

I bought it refurbished from Apple's online store. Up until this year, it's been my favorite form factor for a note book computer. I love the form factor of the new MacBook with 12" retina display. But, I also like my MagSafe connector and Thunderbolt port.
 

xStep

macrumors 68020
Jan 28, 2003
2,031
143
Less lost in L.A.
Guys, i had one more question. Is a macbook air 13 inch enough for ios development? What should be the minimum specs of the air for a smooth operation.

This question has been asked many times on this forum. Pretty much any Mac that qualifies to run the current version of Xcode will do. Just do your self a favor and get more than the minimum 4GB of RAM.

I'd wait till next week on a real decision because apple is expected to release a new version of Xcode and the system requirement for it could change from the current version.
 
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