Apple unveils Swift, a brand new Xcode programming language for developers

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  • Reply 101 of 214
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by eckergus View Post

    Oh crap! I totally missed the sarcasm! I see it now. (shoot me). I take that back man. I'm sorry, I was lead by impulse and I shouldn't have!



    No worries. I’m sure he doesn’t mind, either.

  • Reply 102 of 214
    adonissmuadonissmu Posts: 1,776member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by eckergus View Post





    Product announcements are always in the fall, not during WWDC... but you wouldn't know that since you obviously know nothing about Apple.

    Nevermind. LOL!

  • Reply 103 of 214
    canukstormcanukstorm Posts: 2,732member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Slurpy View Post

     

    There's no way anyone that gives a shit about software could feel "udnerwhelming" by this keynote. It was the single most impressive event, that I've EVER seen from Apple when it comes to iOS/OSX features, API, and development tools. Not only did they address pretty much every major complaint in some ways, they added features that I didnt even imagine, but make perfect fucking practical sense. Apple has clearly been busy, and all the additions and changes are thoughtful, well considered features that are incredibly practical and useful. I was literally cheering at so many points. Cant WAIT for the new OSX and iOS- the phone/message integration and "continuity" features will be used by me literally all the time. Hardware announcements will come later, but this exceeded my expectations in terms of software. Well done Apple- you haven't lost your touch, and are firing on all cylinders. iOS development was already far, far ahead of Android dev, but these improvements widen the gap infinitely more. 


    Couldn't agree more! This keynote was awesome!

  • Reply 104 of 214
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member

    I'm not an expert in computer languages but that doesn't look like the same language Apple demoed today.
  • Reply 105 of 214
    canukstormcanukstorm Posts: 2,732member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TheOtherGeoff View Post

     

    +1.

     

    Agreed. I see a whole slew of HW.  And a whole slew of stuff that won't happen, specifically, Apple will not in the short term build a LTE chip into a laptop (tethering/hotspotting will become second nature).

     

    The cloud stuff piques my interest in Cloud syncing to local intermediate devices (write through caching on a Airport/TimeCapsule/AppleTV).  Depending on a 3rd party (my ISP) for a great experience is begging for trouble.   Especially with homeKit, why not have a 'home automation' platform (replace my mac Mini running Indigo), that also caches all those apps (why download 8 copies of an iOS upgrade for my 3 iPads and 5 phones?),as well as pictures, videos, etc.   Same with Health Kit.


     All good points.  I wonder if the introduction of Metal & Swift hints at OSX coming to ARM architecture.

  • Reply 106 of 214
    dick applebaumdick applebaum Posts: 12,527member
    solipsismx wrote: »

    I'm not an expert in computer languages but that doesn't look like the same language Apple demoed today.

    Yeah ... my bad -- sorry!
  • Reply 107 of 214
    I'm reading the Swift manual. Very interesting so far. Since it's over 400 pages, most people commenting here haven't read it yet, fairly safe to say.
  • Reply 108 of 214
    benjamin frostbenjamin frost Posts: 7,203member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post

     
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TheOtherGeoff View Post

     
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by EricTheHalfBee View Post



    I called it. I said that developer resources at Apple would have been primarily used to convert iOS to 64bit, which is why iOS 7 wasn't a huge update.





    Now that the difficult 64bit transition is done, Apple could devote resources back to iOS 8 itself. And boy did they deliver.




    this.



    Apple just layed down another 5 years of OS foundation: 64 Bit, Biometrically protected, with New faster language, New GL 'to the metal'  interface.   That's covers a new generation of developers, and as grow curves go, will take Apple to the 2 Billion iOS user range.  (if 130 Million NEW users last year is a factual number... figure that it will be 200+ million in a couple years).




    You guys are both right on!



    IMO, this is the most significant announcement(s) that Apple has ever made -- and it didn't include any hardware. *



    In both OS X and iOS Apple has set the bar for the next 10 years. All this and a new programming language with ability to do interactive programming and running of an app.



    Then there's the iCloud ... And the new apps ... And .... And ...



    I suspect within a few weeks Apple will make some separate hardware announcements to exploit these new capabilities.



    We ain't seen nothin' yet!





    * I'd bet some of those iPads had the A8 APU, with a new GPU and lots of RAM to exploit the 64-bit capability.



    Yosemite just finished downloading -- waiting for my iOS device files and xCode ... really anxious to play!

     

    I share your enthusiasm! Although my prediction of a new operating system was wrong, the new programming language will lay the foundations for a merging of the iOS and Mac App Stores. 

     

    Even knowing nothing about coding, I was impressed by the demo - real-time feedback is something I've never seen before. The gasp of astonishment from the audience was palpable. 4,000 APIs!

     

    I thought the Family Sharing was very clever. The ability to make phone calls and texts from Mac, iPhone and iPad is great. 

  • Reply 109 of 214
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Even knowing nothing about coding, I was impressed by the demo - real-time feedback is something I've never seen before.

    1) This should make learning a language much easier as your actions will be evaluated instantly so the programmer will be able to better conceptualize how their code is being interpreted by the compiler as they write it.

    2) I saw this concept for a Kickstarter project a few years ago.
  • Reply 110 of 214
    boltsfan17boltsfan17 Posts: 2,294member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post



    I just checked Amazon and there are zero books for programming in Swift. No one is supporting it! FAIL!

    lol....maybe it's published by Hachette 

  • Reply 111 of 214
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Negafox View Post

     

    You can do iOS development in C/C++. Makes the code portable if you plan to go that route. I am curious to learn more about Swift. Objective-C was a tad slow and I am forced to treat all warnings as errors to avoid threads dying and leading to bizarre behavior.


     

    They've fixed that and it's in the beta notes.

     

    ObjC/C/C++ won't be replaced, no matter how much they try. Lattner would have been better releasing ObjC 3.0 with what they are calling Swift, and stop the stupid idea of having your headers and implementation mixed together.

     

    Go is another ``better than C/C++'' option by Google. It won't go anywhere either.

     

    Apple will try all they want but entrenching ObjC/C ObjC++/C++ marriages into the frameworks since iOS 1.x and of course since NeXTSTEP it's rather asinine to come out with this as a means to move beyond.

     

    We just got LLVM C++14 ready.

     

    I see Swift more as a rapid prototyping of applications in this language and then optimizing in C for every scrap of performance [If you'll notice they never once compared a few advantages Swift had over ObjC and Python, with C or C++].

  • Reply 112 of 214
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    I wish I knew how to program (as I have great ideas on games/apps but not a lick on how to program), but this seems more like an attempt to make their games a bit more exclusive to their platform. 

    Possibly but even AMD is going this way to avoid the overhead of OpenGL. If the performance increases are accurate I can see rapid adoption of Metal. As far as swift goes most game cores are written in C++ and I really don't see that changing.
  • Reply 113 of 214
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    They've fixed that and it's in the beta notes.

    ObjC/C/C++ won't be replaced, no matter how much they try. Lattner would have been better releasing ObjC 3.0 with what they are calling Swift, and stop the stupid idea of having your headers and implementation mixed together.

    Go is another ``better than C/C++'' option by Google. It won't go anywhere either.

    Apple will try all they want but entrenching ObjC/C ObjC++/C++ marriages into the frameworks since iOS 1.x and of course since NeXTSTEP it's rather asinine to come out with this as a means to move beyond.

    We just got LLVM C++14 ready.

    I see Swift more as a rapid prototyping of applications in this language and then optimizing in C for every scrap of performance [If you'll notice they never once compared a few advantages Swift had over ObjC and Python, with C or C++].

    C code ( and objective C code ) can be imported into swift modules. And swift code into obj c modules unless it has features (like tuples) which are not available on Obj C.

    C++ code has to be imported into swift via obj C

    All to say you may be right. Going forward, if people get used to the swift syntax and it is faster, I see swift being used for UI and other prootyping and smaller apps. Will it replace objective c fully? Probably not.
  • Reply 114 of 214
    hametahameta Posts: 79member
    wizard69 wrote: »
    Possibly but even AMD is going this way to avoid the overhead of OpenGL. If the performance increases are accurate I can see rapid adoption of Metal. As far as swift goes most game cores are written in C++ and I really don't see that changing.


    I Think, Swift to Obj-C is Compared to JQuery to JavaScript, Having Watched Him Demoed.
  • Reply 115 of 214
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post





    http://swift-lang.org

     

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jasenj1 View Post

     

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-swift-programming-language/id881256329

     

    iBooks says it is unavailable. :(

     

    I went in through iTunes, not iBooks, and was able to download it. Maybe they flipped the switch and it's now available.


     

    It's available. I downloaded it. I have it on my Mac and my iPad.

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post





    Forstall was technical. He wrote code in NEXT. In fact he wrote something which became the basis of UITableview which is the workhorse of iOS navigation.

    This has nothing to do with the hardware. Nothing.



    It's an interesting language and actually resembles C# rather than JavaScript.



    Some of the excitement about type inference is overblown. Generics is interesting. Triples are interesting. And I am 10% through the book.

     

    Scott was one of the principle Architects of AppKit, to be more precise.

  • Reply 116 of 214
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post





    1) This should make learning a language much easier as your actions will be evaluated instantly so the programmer will be able to better conceptualize how their code is being interpreted by the compiler as they write it.



    2) I saw this concept for a Kickstarter project a few years ago.



     

    Swift and Xcode look like the perfect combo for personal programming instructor, IMO. All it needs now is to allow Siri queries to help navigate the thousands of APIs (ideally, I'd like to describe in general terms to Siri what I need to do programming-wise and then get some recommendations back).

  • Reply 117 of 214
    suddenly newtonsuddenly newton Posts: 13,819member
    I loved the reactions on the faces of the older members of the crowd as Swift was being described. That, to me, is the biggest indication that Apple has done something huge here.

    You mean the guys who are still coding on OS/2 with OpenDoc?
  • Reply 118 of 214
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post





    C code ( and objective C code ) can be imported into swift modules. And swift code into obj c modules unless it has features (like tuples) which are not available on Obj C.



    C++ code has to be imported into swift via obj C



    All to say you may be right. Going forward, if people get used to the swift syntax and it is faster, I see swift being used for UI and other prootyping and smaller apps. Will it replace objective c fully? Probably not.

     

    I read all the same stuff you have in the Swift Programming Book. I'm just irritated Lattner isn't bridging a strong-hold for 25 years of ObjC, but instead is hoping his cherry picking of ObjC/C++ and calling it Swift will have everyone abandoning decades: it won't.

     

    He also did nothing but select snippets of code he already prototype, tested and debugged, so he could show the Demo. These demos are really a poor man's NeXT Demo back at NeXTWorld or ObjectWorld where senior NeXTSTEP devs would literally show you how quickly to build some cool apps.

     

    Of course the heavy lifting in his demo was the Frameworks already worked on for the past 2+ years.

  • Reply 119 of 214
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    I loved the reactions on the faces of the older members of the crowd as Swift was being described. That, to me, is the biggest indication that Apple has done something huge here.

    The old guys looked sullen to me. The young guys were more excited. The old guys probably don't want to learn yet another language.
  • Reply 120 of 214
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    asdasd wrote: »
    This has nothing to do with the hardware. Nothing.

    We'll metal does. Should be interesting how well they can abstract that across all the various iOS hardware.
    Some of the excitement about type inference is overblown. Generics is interesting. Triples are interesting. And I am 10% through the book.

    I'm through about the same. Yah, I never got the excitement about type inference.
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