iOS Learn Objective-C or Swift?

[kage207]

Swift doesn't have to become anything more than a language that works.

There's two issues here:

1. Swift working to develop apps for iOS

2. Swift being adopted by the software dev world. This has a direct impact on jobs, books, 3rd party support, etc...

Indie developers have a bonus if they play their cards right. They can put out an app and hope for the best and if it fails, they could have high demand skills for a great job.

If they select Swift and if it never gets adopted by the industry, those skills are going to be less marketable.

It'll probably take a while before we know how the industry adopts Swift, or even if they do.

If someone cares about jobs, they could monitor the job boards and see how ofter Swift comes up.

One upside to Swift is that you'd be spending less time learning syntax and more time learning APIs and Xcode and other things.

Again, you really think Apple won't make the industry adopt Swift?

I don't think they'd waste a bunch of time doing something like Swift and then let the industry tell them no. I've done both Objective-C and Swift. After some gripes I'd rather write Swift.

 

[1458279]

Again, you really think Apple won't make the industry adopt Swift?

I don't think they'd waste a bunch of time doing something like Swift and then let the industry tell them no. I've done both Objective-C and Swift. After some gripes I'd rather write Swift.

It's likely that Apple does have the power to push Swift, if nothing else, most use Apple's Xcode... all Apple has to do is make a change to Xcode and many will be force to fight or switch... They'll probably switch

Not all companies have this kind of power, MS told us that Visual FoxPro was the future of business development... Computer Assoc told us Visual Objects was the future or business development... both were wrong.

However, Apple's more in tune and more importantly they have more control, so my bet is that Swift will gain acceptance. That's not a bad thing, I just hope the job market takes hold because job skills in demand is a great backup.

 

[derekmlr]

Depends. Swift is a new language that's still being tweaked and slowly gaining more 3rd party support with libraries and what not. It seems to be the future of the OS X and iOS platforms, so it'll most likely become relevant soon enough.

However, if you're looking into a history of 3rd party support (tons of libraries and existing code), working on existing apps, working with the majority of other OSX/iOS developers, etc... Objective C is where it's at.

I'm picking Swift atm cause I like the style of the syntax much more and feel there's enough support for what I'll do.

 

[firewood]

I would just Learn Objective C. It will take Years if Not Decades Before Swift Become Defacto Language.

There seem to be developers placing betting odds on Swift clearly being the most popular language for new iOS and Mac OS X apps next year (2016), with some experience in Swift being required on ones resume for the bulk of employment for creating such apps. Apple Watch code in Swift is already close to being dominant online compared to C/ObjC, if not already there.

Of course, there's still an ocean of Objective C code to be maintained.