I didn't think you would hate Unity. Why is that? I'll admit to having very little experience with it.
Oh, SO much bloat. Tons of overhead to doing simple things, and there’s not even a working 64-bit version of the engine outside an unofficial Linux-only build. Being hard limited to 3 gigs of RAM under penalty of the application crashing (instead of being protected against being allowed to use the RAM in the first place) isn’t cool this side of 2010.
As an old fart, I can tell you that your interpretation to that reaction is probably mostly wrong. Those of us who have been programming for a long time and have been in fact exposed to multiple programming languages and environments have that reaction because there is nothing new or revolutionary about Swift as a programming language. I haven't taken an in-depth look at Swift yet - but, from the parts of the presentation I have seen, the code samples, and discussion - it appears to be yet another hybrid functional/imperative programming language that will remain proprietary to Apple. And there is nothing really new and revolutionary about the tooling either - VS has had an interactive console for F# (I use F# as an example because Swift appears to be very similar syntactically) for quite some time. I'm sure that many of those "old farts" are looking forward to having a modern language and toolset to add to their tool belt - but, since they have seen it all before they aren't going to jump up and down like this is the best thing since sliced bread. Only the young and inexperienced would do that - since they don't know any better.
Exactly. It's like you go to the movies and see a bunch of teenagers walking out saying how this was the "Greatest movie ever," and you were yawning the whole time because it was exactly the same as 5 movies you've seen before.
Oh, SO much bloat. Tons of overhead to doing simple things, and there’s not even a working 64-bit version of the engine outside an unofficial Linux-only build. Being hard limited to 3 gigs of RAM under penalty of the application crashing (instead of being protected against being allowed to use the RAM in the first place) isn’t cool this side of 2010.
Those may be valid complaints. When I think of unity, I think of indie developers. That's probably what creates a positive association for me.
I think direction means choosing a path. When they release so many APIs, to me that's like brute force exploring all paths instead of choosing one. You could put a positive spin on it and say they're giving people choice, but to me it just looks like they had no Big Idea this year so decided to make up for it with sheer quantity.
When you have a mature product and the resources, you can go down multiple paths at the same time and still have direction. HealthKit, CloudKit, home automation, SceneKit, etc. This is not a shotgun approach to see what sticks but it is now adding in value along several different paths. Big difference.
When you have a mature product and the resources, you can go down multiple paths at the same time and still have direction. HealthKit, CloudKit, home automation, SceneKit, etc. This is not a shotgun approach to see what sticks but it is now adding in value along several different paths. Big difference.
And each of those uses many of the same foundations that they've perfected over many years of focus. I saw nothing that would indicate they have no clue nor faith that each of those aformenetioned toolkits, as well as Metal, Swift, and others mentioned yesterday.
Apple develops an improved programming language. Google copied Java. Everything you need to know, right there. " src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
um... Apple ripped a lot from other languages. Nothing wrong with that, this is how we evolve. Also Google has Go which itself is pretty innovative. Wouldn't be surprised if Android gets it's own new language in the next couple years.
I guess I am an old timer (got my first programming job in 1988 and I was not a teenager). I am excited by Swift. A lot. It does a lot of things that I've been wanting in a systems level language for a long time -- at least 20 years when I was pushing for changes at a large company I worked for. I am not enamored of the Swift syntax, but syntax is not a language and I can get over that pretty easy. Other languages have been doing at least some of these things but they were either experimental or academic languages, or scripting languages, or were on platforms that I couldn't care less about (MS for example). I can't say I've been doing ObjectiveC (or WebScript -- the interpreted scripting version of ObjectiveC at one time) since the very beginning, but I have been doing it since 1996, and I am excited by Swift. Because it advances the state of programming a major platform that I like to program for, using all the parts of ObjectiveC that I liked, namely the run-time (and the fact we can mix and match -- reminds me of my days at DEC when you could mix and match all the languages they supported in a program at the object code level).
So Rovio, Electronic Arts, Disney, thousands of independent studios developing on more than 20 platforms... They all don't have a clue?
Come on man, that's even below your standards.
Anyway, I see your extensive list of well formed arguments why Unity would suck, so I guess you are right!
And I, more than 20 years in the industry, got a clue. Not you as it seems.
Unity 5 resolves a lot of your points, if not all.
I'd rather work with these limitations and have the freedom of multi platform development which is becoming a necessity with the increasingly saturated market.
So Rovio, Electronic Arts, Disney, thousands of independent studios developing on more than 20 platforms... They all don't have a clue?
That’s funny; I don’t recall making any statement as to them needing a clue. Perhaps you should read posts before replying? Or just don’t reply at all. Ever again. That’d be better.
I guess I am an old timer (got my first programming job in 1988 and I was not a teenager). I am excited by Swift. A lot. It does a lot of things that I've been wanting in a systems level language for a long time -- at least 20 years when I was pushing for changes at a large company I worked for. I am not enamored of the Swift syntax, but syntax is not a language and I can get over that pretty easy. Other languages have been doing at least some of these things but they were either experimental or academic languages, or scripting languages, or were on platforms that I couldn't care less about (MS for example). I can't say I've been doing ObjectiveC (or WebScript -- the interpreted scripting version of ObjectiveC at one time) since the very beginning, but I have been doing it since 1996, and I am excited by Swift. Because it advances the state of programming a major platform that I like to program for, using all the parts of ObjectiveC that I liked, namely the run-time (and the fact we can mix and match -- reminds me of my days at DEC when you could mix and match all the languages they supported in a program at the object code level).
Not all old timers cling to their cruft
Yup, that is precisely the point: there's nothing new in terms of language features, but it's new to Apple's platform, and that's what the developers at the WWDC care about.
It's laughable to read all the experts here bleating on about how none of this stuff is new; Apple never claimed it was.
Agreed. Anything that help release coding from the deathgrip of the graybeards (which is also a great album title) is fine by me. The reaction of the old timers to this is hilarious. "Whut? People don't likes teh pointers? Ah, they're not real coders! Feh!" Good riddance to old farts.
Where I work it costs more to write software than it does to design, build and test hardware, and the hardware side includes the EEs writing VHDL for FPGAs. Something is seriously wrong there.
Objective C developers are generally fairly young given that the iOS SDK is young. Mac devs are a tiny part of that ecosystem.
However they may not be happy with swift. Objective C had faults with some of its syntax, the headers and old c style imports but that came with the ability to import a c project and just use it (unclear on swift) and c++ ( impossible on swift). Further although you can get interoperability in one direction, from objective C, you can't reliably in the other. Because obj c doesn't support tuples etc. So what's the point? Either don't add features new to swift or have classes and instances which can only work fully in one direction. On a large project this would have to mean the providers of swift classes not using all the features. That will probably stop existing projects from porting. New devs might.
I can see apple taking a decade to make this transition fully. I don't see them only releasing API only on swift for at least half a decade.
Objective C developers are generally fairly young given that the iOS SDK is young. Mac devs are a tiny part of that ecosystem.
However they may not be happy with swift. Objective C had faults with some of its syntax, the headers and old c style imports but that came with the ability to import a c project and just use it (unclear on swift) and c++ ( impossible on swift). Further although you can get interoperability in one direction, from objective C, you can't reliably in the other. Because obj c doesn't support tuples etc. So what's the point? Either don't add features new to swift or have classes and instances which can only work fully in one direction. On a large project this would have to mean the providers of swift classes not using all the features. That will probably stop existing projects from porting. New devs might.
I can see apple taking a decade to make this transition fully. I don't see them only releasing API only on swift for at least half a decade.
You know even Microsoft own apps haven't fully switch to .net and still stuck with old and depreciated win32 and dcom runtimes, more than 10 years after introducing .net and C#. Every major OS has many runtime API with different programming language associated to each, Android has multiple language and IDE.
Objective-C has many historical shortcomings bind to his C derivative, Apple wanted to solve syntax issue will having a much more modern and simplify language without breaking with the past like Microsoft has with .net. Since a xcode project can mix Objective-C, pure C, C++ and Swift, this is a welcome change from Apple, now let see how the competition will react.
That’s funny; I don’t recall making any statement as to them needing a clue. Perhaps you should read posts before replying? Or just don’t reply at all. Ever again. That’d be better.
I read your post and my answer is still logical. Be more clear and start making sense. And your responds about not replying is childish. If you are wrong, just admit it.
Agreed. It's logical for Apple to release swift now and it will be huge success in the long run. It's a great evolution.
I think WWDC was one of the best ever because most of what they announced was to support the dev community. Swift is one of those pillars.
Yeah, Objective-C, Apple sure had NO CLUE what they were doing when they pulled that one out. We should all still be coding in BASIC, because anything newer is “not a good idea.” :no:
You know even Microsoft own apps haven't fully switch to .net and still stuck with old and depreciated win32 and dcom runtimes, more than 10 years after introducing .net and C#. Every major OS has many runtime API with different programming language associated to each, Android has multiple language and IDE.
Objective-C has many historical shortcomings bind to his C derivative, Apple wanted to solve syntax issue will having a much more modern and simplify language without breaking with the past like Microsoft has with .net. Since a xcode project can mix Objective-C, pure C, C++ and Swift, this is a welcome change from Apple, now let see how the competition will react.
.NET supports many languages - C#, F#, VB, JavaScript and C++. And that's just the ones from MS - there are several other languages that target .NET from 3rd parties as well. Also, you can have multiple different projects - each using a different language - mixed to create an application. Not to mention it's pretty easy to create components in .NET that can be called from non-.NET languages like unmanaged C++. It goes the other way as well - it's simple to call COM or native libraries from .NET languages. Because of this, it's not necessary to rewrite entire applications to make use of .NET - rewrites for the sake of rewriting doesn't usually make economic sense...
So, what reaction do you expect from the competition? There is nothing unique in Swift or the apple dev tools really - other than they are proprietary to Apple. With C#, it's actually possible to target iOS, OS X, and Android (using tools such as Unity or Xamarin. Can the same be said of Swift?
Understand, I'm not saying that Swift isn't a nice addition to a dev's toolkit - it's just not as revolutionary as some are making it out to be.
.NET supports many languages - C#, F#, VB, JavaScript and C++. And that's just the ones from MS - there are several other languages that target .NET from 3rd parties as well. Also, you can have multiple different projects - each using a different language - mixed to create an application. Not to mention it's pretty easy to create components in .NET that can be called from non-.NET languages like unmanaged C++. It goes the other way as well - it's simple to call COM or native libraries from .NET languages. Because of this, it's not necessary to rewrite entire applications to make use of .NET - rewrites for the sake of rewriting doesn't usually make economic sense...
So, what reaction do you expect from the competition? There is nothing unique in Swift or the apple dev tools really - other than they are proprietary to Apple. With C#, it's actually possible to target iOS, OS X, and Android (using tools such as Unity or Xamarin. Can the same be said of Swift?
Understand, I'm not saying that Swift isn't a nice addition to a dev's toolkit - it's just not as revolutionary as some are making it out to be.
The important thing is not the language but the IDE and API on which the Apps is based on. Before .NET, Microsoft had no unified and modern IDE, .NET was a created in reaction of Objective-C and Xcode IDE. Because .NET was rushed Microsoft has screwed their first 4 versions of .NET, making every iteration of .NET binary incompatible with each other, forcing every Windows users to keeps multiple version of .NET runtime environment up to date. Still today many own Microsoft apps bundled with Windows are not ported to .NET, because Apps based on win32.dll runtime API needs rewrite to be ported on .NET.
Beside, while you can target other platform with C# and third party API (Mono), same applies to Objective-C and since Swift is part of LLVM and CLANG, it will surely be available in open source like everything else. How do you thing Apple is porting Safari and iTunes to windows, did you know before being OSX, OpenStep was NeXT Step runtime environment for running NeXT apps within Windows and Apple still use it for their own Windows apps?
I agree, there is nothing unique with the Swift language itself, but the revolution is with Xcode playground. Have you see how powerful it is to have a language that can be both compiled and interpreted? You can see actual result while you are coding, you've got an interactive playground and debugging tools nowhere seen elsewhere for a compiled runtime. All C derivatives languages are burden by C legacy, things like semicolon at each line was mandatory because of the teletype origine of C. It was really time for someone to rethink and bring a fresh start to modern programming language and development tools.
I recommend you to watch the WWDC 2014 Platforms State of the Union video, they show Xcode playground more in depth with interactive documentations, live results and visual debugger.
Comments
I didn't think you would hate Unity. Why is that? I'll admit to having very little experience with it.
Oh, SO much bloat. Tons of overhead to doing simple things, and there’s not even a working 64-bit version of the engine outside an unofficial Linux-only build. Being hard limited to 3 gigs of RAM under penalty of the application crashing (instead of being protected against being allowed to use the RAM in the first place) isn’t cool this side of 2010.
I am glad you capitalised and colorised that or I wouldn't have taken it seriously.
+1
Post like his are prime validation for "thumbs down", along with "thumbs up".
As an old fart, I can tell you that your interpretation to that reaction is probably mostly wrong. Those of us who have been programming for a long time and have been in fact exposed to multiple programming languages and environments have that reaction because there is nothing new or revolutionary about Swift as a programming language. I haven't taken an in-depth look at Swift yet - but, from the parts of the presentation I have seen, the code samples, and discussion - it appears to be yet another hybrid functional/imperative programming language that will remain proprietary to Apple. And there is nothing really new and revolutionary about the tooling either - VS has had an interactive console for F# (I use F# as an example because Swift appears to be very similar syntactically) for quite some time. I'm sure that many of those "old farts" are looking forward to having a modern language and toolset to add to their tool belt - but, since they have seen it all before they aren't going to jump up and down like this is the best thing since sliced bread. Only the young and inexperienced would do that - since they don't know any better.
Exactly. It's like you go to the movies and see a bunch of teenagers walking out saying how this was the "Greatest movie ever," and you were yawning the whole time because it was exactly the same as 5 movies you've seen before.
Oh, SO much bloat. Tons of overhead to doing simple things, and there’s not even a working 64-bit version of the engine outside an unofficial Linux-only build. Being hard limited to 3 gigs of RAM under penalty of the application crashing (instead of being protected against being allowed to use the RAM in the first place) isn’t cool this side of 2010.
Those may be valid complaints. When I think of unity, I think of indie developers. That's probably what creates a positive association for me.
Oh, they’ve certainly done some good things with it–Kerbal Space Program, for example–but the limitations of the platform really hinder development.
Originally Posted by ascii
I think direction means choosing a path. When they release so many APIs, to me that's like brute force exploring all paths instead of choosing one. You could put a positive spin on it and say they're giving people choice, but to me it just looks like they had no Big Idea this year so decided to make up for it with sheer quantity.
When you have a mature product and the resources, you can go down multiple paths at the same time and still have direction. HealthKit, CloudKit, home automation, SceneKit, etc. This is not a shotgun approach to see what sticks but it is now adding in value along several different paths. Big difference.
And each of those uses many of the same foundations that they've perfected over many years of focus. I saw nothing that would indicate they have no clue nor faith that each of those aformenetioned toolkits, as well as Metal, Swift, and others mentioned yesterday.
Apple develops an improved programming language. Google copied Java. Everything you need to know, right there.
" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
um... Apple ripped a lot from other languages. Nothing wrong with that, this is how we evolve. Also Google has Go which itself is pretty innovative. Wouldn't be surprised if Android gets it's own new language in the next couple years.
I guess I am an old timer (got my first programming job in 1988 and I was not a teenager). I am excited by Swift. A lot. It does a lot of things that I've been wanting in a systems level language for a long time -- at least 20 years when I was pushing for changes at a large company I worked for. I am not enamored of the Swift syntax, but syntax is not a language and I can get over that pretty easy. Other languages have been doing at least some of these things but they were either experimental or academic languages, or scripting languages, or were on platforms that I couldn't care less about (MS for example). I can't say I've been doing ObjectiveC (or WebScript -- the interpreted scripting version of ObjectiveC at one time) since the very beginning, but I have been doing it since 1996, and I am excited by Swift. Because it advances the state of programming a major platform that I like to program for, using all the parts of ObjectiveC that I liked, namely the run-time (and the fact we can mix and match -- reminds me of my days at DEC when you could mix and match all the languages they supported in a program at the object code level).
Not all old timers cling to their cruft
Come on man, that's even below your standards.
Anyway, I see your extensive list of well formed arguments why Unity would suck, so I guess you are right!
And I, more than 20 years in the industry, got a clue. Not you as it seems.
I'd rather work with these limitations and have the freedom of multi platform development which is becoming a necessity with the increasingly saturated market.
That’s funny; I don’t recall making any statement as to them needing a clue. Perhaps you should read posts before replying? Or just don’t reply at all. Ever again. That’d be better.
I guess I am an old timer (got my first programming job in 1988 and I was not a teenager). I am excited by Swift. A lot. It does a lot of things that I've been wanting in a systems level language for a long time -- at least 20 years when I was pushing for changes at a large company I worked for. I am not enamored of the Swift syntax, but syntax is not a language and I can get over that pretty easy. Other languages have been doing at least some of these things but they were either experimental or academic languages, or scripting languages, or were on platforms that I couldn't care less about (MS for example). I can't say I've been doing ObjectiveC (or WebScript -- the interpreted scripting version of ObjectiveC at one time) since the very beginning, but I have been doing it since 1996, and I am excited by Swift. Because it advances the state of programming a major platform that I like to program for, using all the parts of ObjectiveC that I liked, namely the run-time (and the fact we can mix and match -- reminds me of my days at DEC when you could mix and match all the languages they supported in a program at the object code level).
Not all old timers cling to their cruft
Yup, that is precisely the point: there's nothing new in terms of language features, but it's new to Apple's platform, and that's what the developers at the WWDC care about.
It's laughable to read all the experts here bleating on about how none of this stuff is new; Apple never claimed it was.
Objective C developers are generally fairly young given that the iOS SDK is young. Mac devs are a tiny part of that ecosystem.
However they may not be happy with swift. Objective C had faults with some of its syntax, the headers and old c style imports but that came with the ability to import a c project and just use it (unclear on swift) and c++ ( impossible on swift). Further although you can get interoperability in one direction, from objective C, you can't reliably in the other. Because obj c doesn't support tuples etc. So what's the point? Either don't add features new to swift or have classes and instances which can only work fully in one direction. On a large project this would have to mean the providers of swift classes not using all the features. That will probably stop existing projects from porting. New devs might.
I can see apple taking a decade to make this transition fully. I don't see them only releasing API only on swift for at least half a decade.
Objective C developers are generally fairly young given that the iOS SDK is young. Mac devs are a tiny part of that ecosystem.
However they may not be happy with swift. Objective C had faults with some of its syntax, the headers and old c style imports but that came with the ability to import a c project and just use it (unclear on swift) and c++ ( impossible on swift). Further although you can get interoperability in one direction, from objective C, you can't reliably in the other. Because obj c doesn't support tuples etc. So what's the point? Either don't add features new to swift or have classes and instances which can only work fully in one direction. On a large project this would have to mean the providers of swift classes not using all the features. That will probably stop existing projects from porting. New devs might.
I can see apple taking a decade to make this transition fully. I don't see them only releasing API only on swift for at least half a decade.
You know even Microsoft own apps haven't fully switch to .net and still stuck with old and depreciated win32 and dcom runtimes, more than 10 years after introducing .net and C#. Every major OS has many runtime API with different programming language associated to each, Android has multiple language and IDE.
Objective-C has many historical shortcomings bind to his C derivative, Apple wanted to solve syntax issue will having a much more modern and simplify language without breaking with the past like Microsoft has with .net. Since a xcode project can mix Objective-C, pure C, C++ and Swift, this is a welcome change from Apple, now let see how the competition will react.
I read your post and my answer is still logical. Be more clear and start making sense. And your responds about not replying is childish. If you are wrong, just admit it.
I think WWDC was one of the best ever because most of what they announced was to support the dev community. Swift is one of those pillars.
You know even Microsoft own apps haven't fully switch to .net and still stuck with old and depreciated win32 and dcom runtimes, more than 10 years after introducing .net and C#. Every major OS has many runtime API with different programming language associated to each, Android has multiple language and IDE.
Objective-C has many historical shortcomings bind to his C derivative, Apple wanted to solve syntax issue will having a much more modern and simplify language without breaking with the past like Microsoft has with .net. Since a xcode project can mix Objective-C, pure C, C++ and Swift, this is a welcome change from Apple, now let see how the competition will react.
.NET supports many languages - C#, F#, VB, JavaScript and C++. And that's just the ones from MS - there are several other languages that target .NET from 3rd parties as well. Also, you can have multiple different projects - each using a different language - mixed to create an application. Not to mention it's pretty easy to create components in .NET that can be called from non-.NET languages like unmanaged C++. It goes the other way as well - it's simple to call COM or native libraries from .NET languages. Because of this, it's not necessary to rewrite entire applications to make use of .NET - rewrites for the sake of rewriting doesn't usually make economic sense...
So, what reaction do you expect from the competition? There is nothing unique in Swift or the apple dev tools really - other than they are proprietary to Apple. With C#, it's actually possible to target iOS, OS X, and Android (using tools such as Unity or Xamarin. Can the same be said of Swift?
Understand, I'm not saying that Swift isn't a nice addition to a dev's toolkit - it's just not as revolutionary as some are making it out to be.
The game engine is very inexpensive and accessible for indies. It's cross platform. There are really few competitors.
.NET supports many languages - C#, F#, VB, JavaScript and C++. And that's just the ones from MS - there are several other languages that target .NET from 3rd parties as well. Also, you can have multiple different projects - each using a different language - mixed to create an application. Not to mention it's pretty easy to create components in .NET that can be called from non-.NET languages like unmanaged C++. It goes the other way as well - it's simple to call COM or native libraries from .NET languages. Because of this, it's not necessary to rewrite entire applications to make use of .NET - rewrites for the sake of rewriting doesn't usually make economic sense...
So, what reaction do you expect from the competition? There is nothing unique in Swift or the apple dev tools really - other than they are proprietary to Apple. With C#, it's actually possible to target iOS, OS X, and Android (using tools such as Unity or Xamarin. Can the same be said of Swift?
Understand, I'm not saying that Swift isn't a nice addition to a dev's toolkit - it's just not as revolutionary as some are making it out to be.
The important thing is not the language but the IDE and API on which the Apps is based on. Before .NET, Microsoft had no unified and modern IDE, .NET was a created in reaction of Objective-C and Xcode IDE. Because .NET was rushed Microsoft has screwed their first 4 versions of .NET, making every iteration of .NET binary incompatible with each other, forcing every Windows users to keeps multiple version of .NET runtime environment up to date. Still today many own Microsoft apps bundled with Windows are not ported to .NET, because Apps based on win32.dll runtime API needs rewrite to be ported on .NET.
Beside, while you can target other platform with C# and third party API (Mono), same applies to Objective-C and since Swift is part of LLVM and CLANG, it will surely be available in open source like everything else. How do you thing Apple is porting Safari and iTunes to windows, did you know before being OSX, OpenStep was NeXT Step runtime environment for running NeXT apps within Windows and Apple still use it for their own Windows apps?
I agree, there is nothing unique with the Swift language itself, but the revolution is with Xcode playground. Have you see how powerful it is to have a language that can be both compiled and interpreted? You can see actual result while you are coding, you've got an interactive playground and debugging tools nowhere seen elsewhere for a compiled runtime. All C derivatives languages are burden by C legacy, things like semicolon at each line was mandatory because of the teletype origine of C. It was really time for someone to rethink and bring a fresh start to modern programming language and development tools.
I recommend you to watch the WWDC 2014 Platforms State of the Union video, they show Xcode playground more in depth with interactive documentations, live results and visual debugger.