IBM Bringing Swift to the Cloud for Simpler Development of Enterprise Apps

[MacRumors]

IBM has announced that it is bringing Apple's Swift development language to the cloud to simplify end-to-end development of enterprise apps. Swift will be available as a server-side language on IBM Cloud, and today's phase of the rollout includes a preview of a Swift runtime and a Swift Package Catalog.

Developers can start exploring the benefits of Swift on the IBM Cloud in three ways:

- Experiment in the Swift Sandbox: Quickly experiment with open sourced Swift, ramp up your skill set and learn what Swift can do for your enterprise by checking out new enhancements to the Swift Sandbox.
- Develop and Deploy: Start building end-to-end applications on Bluemix and quickly deploy them with Kitura, a new open source web server released by IBM, on both OSX and Linux.
- Share Swift Resources: Leverage code across projects by creating packages and submitting them to the Swift Package Catalog on Bluemix to encourage sharing of new Swift resources with the global developer community.

Apple and IBM announced an enterprise partnership in July 2014, released the first ten MobileFirst for iOS apps by year end and have launched new apps periodically since. MobileFirst for iOS apps are designed in a secure environment, and can easily be deployed, managed and upgraded through IBM cloud services.

Apple and IBM list all of the MobileFirst for iOS apps on their websites.

Article Link: IBM Bringing Swift to the Cloud for Simpler Development of Enterprise Apps

 

[AdonisSMU]

This is an interesting development.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Ah, if only Parse wasn't shutting down...I could see this being implemented there

This is really interesting. I'd kind of assumed that regardless of open source, Swift wouldn't have many use cases outside of iOS. Am quite happy to see that potentially not being true.

 

[JoeG4]

Lol I don't know why but this sounds exactly like something a big old corporation would do when they want to look cool but just don't get it.

I can see it now. Kinda chubby salt and pepper haired white guy in a suit at the press release: "we're not just going to use swift, we're going to use swift in the cloud!"

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Is IBM Cloud just a rebranding of SoftLayer, or is it a different service?

I guess it must be different, since SoftLayer was nothing more than infrastructure as a service, and IBM Cloud is talking about supporting specific languages...

 

[AdonisSMU]

Lol I don't know why but this sounds exactly like something a big old corporation would do when they want to look cool but just don't get it.

I can see it now. Kinda chubby salt and pepper haired white guy in a suit at the press release: "we're not just going to use swift, we're going to use swift in the cloud!"

I kii'd. I can totally see this.

 

[frabber]

I kii'd. I can totally see this.

The same can be said of Apple since Swift is obsolete from the start, nothing to write home about amidst the functional languages already in existent. Just Apple catching up, and then still it isn't...

 

[macduke]

Lol I don't know why but this sounds exactly like something a big old corporation would do when they want to look cool but just don't get it.

I can see it now. Kinda chubby salt and pepper haired white guy in a suit at the press release: "we're not just going to use swift, we're going to use swift in the cloud!"

It might seem that way on the surface, but for those of us who design and develop for the web and iOS, this is really interesting. It's not so much about it being the "mystical cloud" but running important services that are vital to our apps using common code bases. As many iOS apps are developed first before their Android counterpart (iOS is better at monetizing, but the spread isn't as significant as it used to be) you end up with developers building their infrastructure on Swift which puts Apple in a more dominant position. It's a smart move but implementation and promotion of this (making it worth it to architect new back-ends with compelling benefits and a marketing team promoting adoption) is key. Apple has traditionally not done well with services in general, but this is kind of different. I hope it goes smoothly for them as it could be really useful and help streamline development.

 

[jozero]

Lol I don't know why but this sounds exactly like something a big old corporation would do when they want to look cool but just don't get it.

I can see it now. Kinda chubby salt and pepper haired white guy in a suit at the press release: "we're not just going to use swift, we're going to use swift in the cloud!"

Uh ? This is great news. Swift is just a language, it doesn't have to only used for native iOS or OSX apps.

If you got really good at swift it would let you write native apps, and then write any required backend in the same language. That really helps at being an expert at something.

Also having the cloud service backed by IBM, which also uses the same backend for their enterprise apps, lets you put your trust into it - less likely to have a situation like Parse.

This is all positive news.

 

[Kajje]

Having 3rd parties putting Swift in the cloud was the main - if not the only - reason why Apple open sourced it. Having the same development environment in the cloud as on iOS will tremendously speed up backoffice development. Having alternative mobile OS'es benefit from this is just small collateral damage and it's still better than having those same iOS apps backed up with Google App Engine for example.

IBM's decision - being the first - putting it in the cloud was not just an overnight gimmick. It is part of the Apple-IBM partnership. While IBM might indeed look like an old crocodile, they are still serious players on the enterprise market and big companies swear to IBM hardware and services, as much as they do with MS products. Having IBM backing up Swift will just guarantee, confirm, emphasize Apple's mobile devices integration in the lucrative Fortune-500 corporation market.

Other cloud providers will soon follow. Probably even Azure and GCP will eventually support it.

 

[blackcrayon]

The same can be said of Apple since Swift is obsolete from the start, nothing to write home about amidst the functional languages already in existent. Just Apple catching up, and then still it isn't...

Swift seems to be well-received and no one other than foamy-mouthed Apple haters seem to think it's "obsolete from the start". The fact that it's open source and coming to other platforms seems pretty exciting. Even if it were for Apple developers only it's a big step forward.

 

[Markoth]

I remember reading something about this during one of my various google searching endeavors a couple months ago. Definitely an interesting development.

 

[usarioclave]

This is an interesting development. Swift might make it as a bridge language, because it's easier to generate and enforce correct code. Plus it's not screwed up the way that the Java runtime is/can be.

 

[HiRez]

Really exciting how Swift is "spreading its wings" so to speak and will be used across a wide range of applications.

For me the missing piece is a front-end web framework where we can write comprehensive web applications in Swift as well (as opposed to say Javascript). But I'll be surprised if there aren't at least several projects in that space in a year or two. There are already several server-side Swift projects.

 

[GenesisST]

Swift seems to be well-received and no one other than foamy-mouthed Apple haters seem to think it's "obsolete from the start". The fact that it's open source and coming to other platforms seems pretty exciting. Even if it were for Apple developers only it's a big step forward.

Well, I'm no Apple hater and still don't feel the love for Swift (nor the hate). But to be honest, I have been doing C/C++ professionally for 20 years and Objective-C for 5 years. I just looove Objective-C.

That said, when I feel the push, I will learn and master it, as I have with Java (eek) and Objective-C.

 

[sudo1996]

I've used both Objective-C and Swift. I really like where Swift is going and think it should replace Obj-C. It just needs to mature more. There are some missing features; some syntax errors I get when trying to use it literally say that something isn't implemented "yet". I'm afraid to try any advanced OOP involving interfaces in Swift because I've reached frustrating dead ends before due to missing features. But it looks like they're going to fix that stuff.

I also used Swift in its early days (1.1). The compiler was almost unusable. I had to resort to magical workarounds to make it not SEGFAULT sometimes. But it seems they have fixed that.

Core Data is really sketchy in Swift. I've seen a non-optional variable come out of Core Data as nil (I forget how), and I wasn't even allowed to check if it was nil because it wasn't optional! Another thing they've gotta fix.

I'm still worried about the closure/block/lambda syntax being horrible and the dictionaries and arrays acting weird. Why the heck are arrays and dicts only sometimes passed by reference?! And I've run into a situation where type-casting a dictionary actually modified its contents!

P.S. I've never written C++ from scratch but have hacked some C++ code. It was like a screwed up version of C... I never saw the point of using it instead of regular C. Wasn't any nicer. I hope it gets left behind.

 

[nt5672]

Well, I'm no Apple hater and still don't feel the love for Swift (nor the hate). But to be honest, I have been doing C/C++ professionally for 20 years and Objective-C for 5 years. I just looove Objective-C.

That said, when I feel the push, I will learn and master it, as I have with Java (eek) and Objective-C.

I felt this way in the beginning, then I coded an app in Swift. Wow did it cut down on lines of code. Now I don't look back, every time I modify a good portion of code I rewrite it in Swift. Its cleaner and more reliable. It is not uncommon to find latent bugs in the rewrite, pointed out by the pedantic, but not perfect Swift compiler. Now some of this code really early objective-c code and these bugs would probably be found by a thorough code review. But it is easier to use the Swift compiler.

 

[trajano]

Sounds like IBM is going to start distancing new development on Java as a platform and move onto Swift as their enterprise development language. Much like the move from COBOL to Java.

 

[shansoft]

Well, I'm no Apple hater and still don't feel the love for Swift (nor the hate). But to be honest, I have been doing C/C++ professionally for 20 years and Objective-C for 5 years. I just looove Objective-C.

That said, when I feel the push, I will learn and master it, as I have with Java (eek) and Objective-C.

You are definitely not alone on this one. Many others including me really dislike the way Swift works. The syntax is much more complex and hard to read/organize in first place. Then many major features like KVO, scope static variable...etc still missing. Performance is still lag behind, and I doubt it will ever catch up.

The ? and ! is simply dumbest thing I have ever come across so far. They either somehow come up with that at the last minute or trying to make it idiot proof than using memory management. Those who think Swift is cleaner and write less code, you must have come from either Web Development or interpreter type of language.

 

[HiRez]

The ? and ! is simply dumbest thing I have ever come across so far. They either somehow come up with that at the last minute or trying to make it idiot proof than using memory management. Those who think Swift is cleaner and write less code, you must have come from either Web Development or interpreter type of language.

No, the "dumbest thing" is having your software crash on your users because you tried to access a variable that doesn't exist, or is the wrong type...which ALL programmers are susceptible to, even the best ones. In theory, you should never use ! and should always unwrap optionals before using them safely. I'm not saying Swift eliminates every possible error, it doesn't. But overall it is a step up in stability. Also I think in programming style, but that's subjective (and I'm coming from Obj-C).

 

[shansoft]

No, the "dumbest thing" is having your software crash on your users because you tried to access a variable that doesn't exist, or is the wrong type...which ALL programmers are susceptible to, even the best ones. In theory, you should never use ! and should always unwrap optionals before using them safely. I'm not saying Swift eliminates every possible error, it doesn't. But overall it is a step up in stability. Also I think in programming style, but that's subjective (and I'm coming from Obj-C).

It's the same problem with weak / assign / strong reference. If you access junk memory, you crash, accessing nil doesn't and just ignore operation. Unwrap is the same thing pretty much. It's really not needed with the original approach. It just added something that makes the code ugly to read.

 

[sudo1996]

It's the same problem with weak / assign / strong reference. If you access junk memory, you crash, accessing nil doesn't and just ignore operation. Unwrap is the same thing pretty much. It's really not needed with the original approach. It just added something that makes the code ugly to read.

It's one extra character that tells you whether an object is guaranteed to be non-nil. It's easy to use it right and never crash as a result. I'd consider that a positive.

[doublepost=1456192942][/doublepost]

Lol I don't know why but this sounds exactly like something a big old corporation would do when they want to look cool but just don't get it.

I can see it now. Kinda chubby salt and pepper haired white guy in a suit at the press release: "we're not just going to use swift, we're going to use swift in the cloud!"

In the cloud with an open stack, RESTful API.
And here I am hosting my stuff on a computer in my basement.

 

[jozero]

Within a year we could have :
- native apps in SWIFT
- backend server side in hosted scalable cloud in SWIFT
- web script written in SWIFT with WebASM since vast majority update their iOS and OSX machines. Would just rely on Chrome and Edge uptake.

Not to shabby at all.

 

[Mums]

Lol I don't know why but this sounds exactly like something a big old corporation would do when they want to look cool but just don't get it.

I can see it now. Kinda chubby salt and pepper haired white guy in a suit at the press release: "we're not just going to use swift, we're going to use swift in the cloud!"

If he's a kinda chubby salt and pepper black guy is that okay with you?

 

[John.B]

It's a smart move but implementation and promotion of this (making it worth it to architect new back-ends with compelling benefits and a marketing team promoting adoption) is key. Apple has traditionally not done well with services in general, but this is kind of different. I hope it goes smoothly for them as it could be really useful and help streamline development.

Remember that IBM is the company that foisted Websphere on the world. Let's not get too excited to quickly...

P.S. I've never written C++ from scratch but have hacked some C++ code. It was like a screwed up version of C... I never saw the point of using it instead of regular C. Wasn't any nicer. I hope it gets left behind.

Once you get all the libraries in order, it's much easier and cleaner to write C++ code than in C. It's a much better language for writing code (vs. low level device drivers, etc.) and far easier to maintain.