Apple's Swift Programming Language May Be Adopted by Google for Android

[jamesrick80]

Android uses Java.....? No wonder it's so laggy.

Android on flagship phones hasn't been laggy in years. If anything, my galaxy S7 edge is smoother and less laggy than my ipad pro 12.9.....there is animation lag all over the latest iOS.

 

[sudo1996]

Python seems to be the suggestion from most developer friends too. And are programmers such dangerous people? 😛

Yeah, it's very popular and is used for a broad range of applications (usually client, web servers, and scripts). And, IMO, Python 3 is the most consistent, well-thought-out, and fully-featured programming language out there. It supports all the major programming paradigms very nicely, so you aren't locked into one.

Swift is more useful for certain things and is faster in practice, of course, but the language has some flaws and is a work in progress. I've run into syntax errors saying "[some OOP feature] is not implemented yet," and the syntax for certain things keeps changing between minor versions. In particular, Apple can't seem to decide on their syntax for function-oriented stuff (things like map functions).

 

[albusseverus]

Hmm, lets see what happened to webkit before we rejoice Google might adopt Swift.
I seem to recall Safari being called the IE of today after Google messed with webkit.
You be the judge.

 

[Stella]

I can't imagine why Google would choose Swift. Swift contains a lot of language constructs to make it interoperable with Objective C, which would be totally useless for Java. This in contrast with f.e. Jetbrains' Kotlin (https://kotlinlang.org/) which is designed to work with Java. Google already uses the Jetbrains IDE as the basis for Android Studio, so they wouldn't have to create a new language plugin for their IDE.

Jet brains have integrated Swift into two of their products ( AppCode and Lion), so they already have a headstart integrating Swift into Android Studio. JB are definitely struggling to keep up with Swift changes - they seem to have a lack of resources in that area.

Hmm, lets see what happened to webkit before we rejoice Google might adopt Swift.
I seem to recall Safari being called the IE of today after Google messed with webkit.
You be the judge.

Safari probably would have headed in the same direction anyway, without Google's contribution. Safari is updated so infrequently compared to other browsers it falls behind quite rapidly.

Google actually contribute quite positively to web technologies.

 

[dan110]

This makes perfect sense. Since Swift is open source, Google can make this it's new language for it's own Branded hardware. Then still provide the java based Android for the OEMs. Now, Google won't upset the Android OEMs when they choose to releases Swift driven, Google Branded hardware.

 

[Detrius]

Android uses Java.....? No wonder it's so laggy.

You must be thinking of the Java from the 1990s. As a developer who uses Java for near-realtime embedded systems, I can tell you that this just isn't an accurate view of Java anymore.

 

[bbeagle]

A serious question for all you guys.

I want to start coding for hobbies sake. Where should I start? Any pointers?

First, choose a platform to code on. This will lead you towards your languages of choice.

iOS? Choose Swift.
Android? Choose Java.
HTML5? Choose HTML/Javascript/CSS and Java.
Mac? Choose Swift.
Windows? Choose C++

1) Sit with a programming book for a couple of days to get familiarized with the basics of a 'Hello, World' program, and a tiny bit deeper.
2) Browse over all the language syntax. Spend about 2 minutes with each language syntax item (like if/then, for/next, try/catch, etc).
3) Pick something you want to create. Anything you're very motivated to do. Maybe a game. Now, figure out how to do this in your language. If you have something you want to do, and are very motivated to do it, you'll be very likely to spend more time learning your language and API functions.

 

[Isometry]

Believe it or not, this actually makes a lot of sense for Google. Even as a secondary language, it would mean that iOS developers would have essentially no language barrier to build Android apps. If they do it right, it could even mean that existing iOS apps could easily be converted into Android apps. Honestly, I hope Google goes through with it. It would be nothing but good for them.

 

[merkinmuffley]

This is not going to happen.

 

[DaveP]

First, choose a platform to code on. This will lead you towards your languages of choice.

iOS? Choose Swift.
Android? Choose Java.
HTML5? Choose HTML/Javascript/CSS and Java.
Mac? Choose Swift.
Windows? Choose C++

...

Why would you choose C++ for Windows? C# seems to be a much more obvious choice.

 

[jonnysods]

Looks like Swift is the language to learn at unit then.

 

[sudo1996]

Google actually contribute quite positively to web technologies.

Google turns the WWW into a bloated mess that takes all your CPU and RAM to load a simple webpage, while sending 20MiB down the wire. And it's like they're making standards up as they go; webpages sometimes only work in Chrome from some bogus HTML5-related reason (looking at you, MegaUpload). It's like what MSFT used to do with IE to screw the other browsers over.
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Android on flagship phones hasn't been laggy in years. If anything, my galaxy S7 edge is smoother and less laggy than my ipad pro 12.9.....there is animation lag all over the latest iOS.

Yeah, I gave up on spelling anything correctly on my laggy iOS 9 keyboard. I don't know if Android has gotten better (used to be horrible), but iOS has definitely gotten a lot worse.