Win, win for all but Oracle (claimed Java owner). While it would be nice to think that Apple would have "control" over Swift, it is now open source and available for modifications. Ideally the "glue" that will keep Swift mods from fragmenting is the interoperability, but with time all companies want their products differentiated so there will be some mods that will break this.
Oracle for better or worst is the owner of Java, there is no reason to question this.
As for Swift, the best thing that could happen to it would be for the community to go before a standardization committee and set the basic language in stone. However they can't do that until Swift has stabilized, right now the language is still in development mode. If there is one thing that C and C++ have going for them is well defined language standards. OK well defined might not apply to C++ but none the less there is a standard and this has been a big factor for many to choose these languages. So maybe 3 years form now we will see an ANSI standard for Swift..
I don't get why Apple bothered open sourcing it. It just gives competitors a helping hand IMO. It's not like Apple needs Swift endorsed by Google for the language to be a success, it's going to have widespread adoption within Apple's own ecosystem.
Though I do look forward to being able to use Swift for server side code.
On the contrary I really think it was critical for Apple to open source this. Doing so drives the community to consider the language as viable for more than Apple device programming. The more people conversant with Swift the better off Apple is. Consider the state of Objective C and the lack of interest in that language. That lack of interest create a vacuum when it comes to qualified Objective C programmers.
Now consider Swift which isn't even a viable programming system yet. Apple has a lot of interest from IBM. if Swift stabilizes and IBM ports it to IBMs mainframes that is a vote of confidence beyond what has already been made by IBM. The Linux community also seems to be at least open to embracing Swift. None of this will happen overnight, as noted Swift and its libraries are still under heavy development. However it is a very positive thing for Apple that will assure the steady flow of qualified Swift programmers.
Think about this for a minute, if Swift is adopted by Google for Android we will suddenly have a massive number of programmers learning Swift. These programmers are then potential Apple developers.
You mention server side code but to be viable there Apple had to adopt Linux as a platform. Once the language is viable on Linux it then becomes acceptable for apps, utilities and other software to be developed on Linux with Swift. Just like a lot of C/C++ code from the Linux world now runs on Macs this just keeps the porting possibilities alive. A utility that urns on Linux built is Swift will be easy to move to a Mac and vice versa. This is a good thing for Mac because so much of the OS is UNIX.
Didn't Apple get screwed over in a patent lawsuit related to iMessage? I forget but they had great plans for something that really hit the skids after a lawsuit.
I don't get why Apple bothered open sourcing it. It just gives competitors a helping hand IMO.
Rest assured if Apple open-sourced it they want this kind of adoption. They open-sourced WebKit for similar reasons. Apple makes money on hardware.
Reminds me, I still say Apple need to make iMessage cross-platform. In the grand scheme of things people staying with Apple for iMessage is a small portion, and having it cross platform similar allows those Android users who become familiar with iMessage over the top the risk free opportunity to try out iOS.
Cross-platform iMessage would be an attempt to own the future of messaging vs the short term gains of keeping some users on iPhone.
Apple just need to figure out a more elegant signup process first. Something akin to how WhatsApp does registration may be a better idea.
Any developer familiar with Swift is, by definition, a potential developer for Apple products.
And vice versa don't forget. Apple has the most talent when it comes to developers, so has more to lose. Currently when a client asks me to write an Android version of an app, I tell them to politely jog on. But if I could write it in Swift, on occasions I might lower my standards So the winner in that scenario is Android, not Apple.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
I feel like the winner is Android getting a free coding language with Apple being the big loser wasting all that time and money on development.
Any developer familiar with Swift is, by definition, a potential developer for Apple products.
And vice versa don't forget. Apple has the most talent when it comes to developers, so has more to lose. Currently when a client asks me to write an Android version of an app, I tell them to politely jog on. But if I could write it in Swift, on occasions I might lower my standards So the winner in that scenario is Android, not Apple.
Nope! Apple has a lot of developers but unfortunately not enough, this especially in the sphere of professional apps. The more developers that see Swift in a positive light the greater the chances are that we will see non traditional Apple developers actually porting software to Macs.
In your case the winner is you, you have now expanded your client base with minimal effort on your part. Apple wins by giving more incentive to developers not already in the ecosystem to develop apps for Apple hardware. In the car of Apple Swift works across all platforms this will not go un noticed by developers outside the Apple world.
Any developer familiar with Swift is, by definition, a potential developer for Apple products.
And vice versa don't forget. Apple has the most talent when it comes to developers, so has more to lose. Currently when a client asks me to write an Android version of an app, I tell them to politely jog on. But if I could write it in Swift, on occasions I might lower my standards So the winner in that scenario is Android, not Apple.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
I feel like the winner is Android getting a free coding language with Apple being the big loser wasting all that time and money on development.
You guys really don't get it do you? Apple wins big time if they can be at the helm of a language that will be the platform going forward for the new generation of hardware to come.
I feel like the winner is Android getting a free coding language with Apple being the big loser wasting all that time and money on development.
You guys really don't get it do you? Apple wins big time if they can be at the helm of a language that will be the platform going forward for the new generation of hardware to come.
I can actually envision Swift hastening the demise of x86, and that would be a great thing.
I don't get why Apple bothered open sourcing it. It just gives competitors a helping hand IMO. It's not like Apple needs Swift endorsed by Google for the language to be a success, it's going to have widespread adoption within Apple's own ecosystem.
Are you kidding? Getting the language to be used on other platforms is critical if Apple wants Swift to become a general-purpose language as they've stated, rather than a niche like Obj-C was (much as I loved that language). If Swift managed to replace Java as the official development language for Android, that would be a huge feather in Apple's cap. In the end, this could mean that instead of doing what you do now with cross-platform code, which is to code the basic functionality in something like C or C++ and then implement platform-specific stuff on top of it in ObjC, C#, Java, or whatever the platform prefers, developers may end up writing it in Swift all the way down. This will not only attract developers to Apple platforms, but also make development for Apple platforms simpler, easier, and more bug-free by eliminating the complexity that comes from the language barriers and the need to cross them. In addition, open-sourcing the language will enable Swift to be taken seriously by the larger community rather than simply Apple developers (indeed, it's pretty much a requirement). This is a win-win all around.
And of course, the other benefits of open-source also apply; namely, improvements to the codebase from the community, and bug fixes. I don't know if you used the early versions of Swift, but they were almost unusable, with the compiler crashing pretty much every few seconds. Open source helps a lot to fix things like that, because you have a much larger developer base looking at these problems. Open-source will also allow Swift to pick up functionality that it currently lacks, such as interoperability with C++ code (which the linked article rightly points out as a current weakness).
It is weird. As they are standing now, Google's Go is a better language and much more mature. Not sure why Google is not pushing hard on the Go.
This is a BetaMax vs VHS kinda thing. Go is currently more mature but has little support and not much traction in the community. Swift has massive traction simply because you can build iOS apps with it (and now code on other platforms) I think Swift will reach maturity before Go reaches marketshare just by the shear momentum it already has. Google can do a lot of things well, but most of the time fails miserably at promoting its own technologies. Too many internal fiefdoms protecting competing projects. Too many egos and a community that has been burned too many times after faithfully adopting a google technology only to have it abruptly abandoned on them on a whim, all contribute to this failure to reach orbit.
Any developer familiar with Swift is, by definition, a potential developer for Apple products.
And vice versa don't forget. Apple has the most talent when it comes to developers, so has more to lose. Currently when a client asks me to write an Android version of an app, I tell them to politely jog on. But if I could write it in Swift, on occasions I might lower my standards So the winner in that scenario is Android, not Apple.
Because Apple has open sourced the Swift language, not the underlying APIs and services for iOS/MacOSX. It is the APIs and services that determine whether your platform will live, die or make any money for you.
I don't get why Apple bothered open sourcing it. It just gives competitors a helping hand IMO. It's not like Apple needs Swift endorsed by Google for the language to be a success, it's going to have widespread adoption within Apple's own ecosystem.
Though I do look forward to being able to use Swift for server side code.
On the contrary I really think it was critical for Apple to open source this. Doing so drives the community to consider the language as viable for more than Apple device programming. The more people conversant with Swift the better off Apple is. Consider the state of Objective C and the lack of interest in that language. That lack of interest create a vacuum when it comes to qualified Objective C programmers.
Now consider Swift which isn't even a viable programming system yet. Apple has a lot of interest from IBM. if Swift stabilizes and IBM ports it to IBMs mainframes that is a vote of confidence beyond what has already been made by IBM. The Linux community also seems to be at least open to embracing Swift. None of this will happen overnight, as noted Swift and its libraries are still under heavy development. However it is a very positive thing for Apple that will assure the steady flow of qualified Swift programmers.
Think about this for a minute, if Swift is adopted by Google for Android we will suddenly have a massive number of programmers learning Swift. These programmers are then potential Apple developers.
You mention server side code but to be viable there Apple had to adopt Linux as a platform. Once the language is viable on Linux it then becomes acceptable for apps, utilities and other software to be developed on Linux with Swift. Just like a lot of C/C++ code from the Linux world now runs on Macs this just keeps the porting possibilities alive. A utility that urns on Linux built is Swift will be easy to move to a Mac and vice versa. This is a good thing for Mac because so much of the OS is UNIX.
But what does Apple stand to gain from the Android dev community? In my experience, Android devs are second rate. It's not about the quantity of developers, it's about quality. I feel Objective C acted like a filter, keeping out the crapy developers who were afraid of an alien syntax. If they can't get their head around a few square brackets, then they are likely not that capable Sure, Android may have more apps nowadays, but that's only because Android accepts any old junk onto it's platform. Any developer with talent writes for iOS, because that's where the money is. I'm a contractor, so I get to see a lot of companies. Management always treat iOS as top priority, and Android is only considered once the app has success on iOS. So now with Swift, Android gains because it's easier to develop for both platforms simultaneously.
But what does Apple stand to gain from the Android dev community? In my experience, Android devs are second rate. It's not about the quantity of developers, it's about quality. I feel Objective C acted like a filter, keeping out the crapy developers who were afraid of an alien syntax. If they can't get their head around a few square brackets, then they are likely not that capable Sure, Android may have more apps nowadays, but that's only because Android accepts any old junk onto it's platform. Any developer with talent writes for iOS, because that's where the money is. I'm a contractor, so I get to see a lot of companies. Management always treat iOS as top priority, and Android is only considered once the app has success on iOS. So now with Swift, Android gains because it's easier to develop for both platforms simultaneously.
There are plenty of great first rate developer's that develop for Android. Yes, iOS still has the lead for apps that are quality slightly, but in reality, the majority of consumers use the same apps on both sides. Social media and games being the major apps.
Just look at the App store and all you really see is games and social media apps. The age of apps has peeked as a ton of people have written about already including die hard Apple advocates.
And vice versa don't forget. Apple has the most talent when it comes to developers, so has more to lose. Currently when a client asks me to write an Android version of an app, I tell them to politely jog on. But if I could write it in Swift, on occasions I might lower my standards So the winner in that scenario is Android, not Apple.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
I feel like the winner is Android getting a free coding language with Apple being the big loser wasting all that time and money on development.
Hardly. Apple suddenly has millions of new potential developers and employees.
And vice versa don't forget. Apple has the most talent when it comes to developers, so has more to lose. Currently when a client asks me to write an Android version of an app, I tell them to politely jog on. But if I could write it in Swift, on occasions I might lower my standards So the winner in that scenario is Android, not Apple.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
I feel like the winner is Android getting a free coding language with Apple being the big loser wasting all that time and money on development.
Hardly. Apple suddenly has millions of new potential developers and employees.
I didn't see anyone mention enterprise IT Developers/Programmers. It seems to me that open-source Swift removes a big barrier to developing server-side and client-side apps for enterprise IT. Given that, I assume Apple products will be much more readily accepted and supported in the enterprise at the IT level.
I wonder if Apple will offer an open-source IDE for Swift Development based on Xcode.
Comments
As for Swift, the best thing that could happen to it would be for the community to go before a standardization committee and set the basic language in stone. However they can't do that until Swift has stabilized, right now the language is still in development mode. If there is one thing that C and C++ have going for them is well defined language standards. OK well defined might not apply to C++ but none the less there is a standard and this has been a big factor for many to choose these languages. So maybe 3 years form now we will see an ANSI standard for Swift..
I feel like the winner is Android getting a free coding language with Apple being the big loser wasting all that time and money on development.
And of course, the other benefits of open-source also apply; namely, improvements to the codebase from the community, and bug fixes. I don't know if you used the early versions of Swift, but they were almost unusable, with the compiler crashing pretty much every few seconds. Open source helps a lot to fix things like that, because you have a much larger developer base looking at these problems. Open-source will also allow Swift to pick up functionality that it currently lacks, such as interoperability with C++ code (which the linked article rightly points out as a current weakness).
It's not about the quantity of developers, it's about quality. I feel Objective C acted like a filter, keeping out the crapy developers who were afraid of an alien syntax. If they can't get their head around a few square brackets, then they are likely not that capable
Sure, Android may have more apps nowadays, but that's only because Android accepts any old junk onto it's platform. Any developer with talent writes for iOS, because that's where the money is.
I'm a contractor, so I get to see a lot of companies. Management always treat iOS as top priority, and Android is only considered once the app has success on iOS.
So now with Swift, Android gains because it's easier to develop for both platforms simultaneously.
Just look at the App store and all you really see is games and social media apps. The age of apps has peeked as a ton of people have written about already including die hard Apple advocates.
I didn't see anyone mention enterprise IT Developers/Programmers. It seems to me that open-source Swift removes a big barrier to developing server-side and client-side apps for enterprise IT. Given that, I assume Apple products will be much more readily accepted and supported in the enterprise at the IT level.
I wonder if Apple will offer an open-source IDE for Swift Development based on Xcode.