A Swifty New Year
01/10/16 02:45 PM Filed in: Development | Swift
Do you listen to Under the Radar, the new(ish) podcast from David Smith and Macro Arment? I have been enjoying it, having missed the shorter format of David Smith’s original podcast, Developing Perspective. It directly relates to topics of interest to indie developers, and the shorter format focuses the conversation a bit.
Because of their ergonomics episode, I finally took the plunge and bought a standing desk. I’ll talk more about that in a separate post, but it has been a really positive experience.
I was surprised by their take on Swift, though. Both developers were emphatically in the “no-Swift-for-me” camp for now. This post is my take on moving to Swift, and what I see as the benefits and drawbacks to doing so at this time.
For the new year, give Swift a try. The barrier to entry is low. Every developer has XCode, and its Swift support just keeps getting better. I can understand the reluctance during the Swift 1.0 days. I didn’t play with it then much, either. I found Playgrounds slow, and the compiler crash-prone. Everyone who was talking about Swift seemed to have jumped right into the deep end of complexity with discussions of functional programming and obscure language features.
But, things have improved. Apple has put together a lovely tutorial where they walk you through a nontrivial iOS app using Swift (no temperature converters here!) Start there and just see how you like it. Many of the tutorials on raywenderlich.com have been re-written in Swift. Take one you’ve done before (or a book you’ve purchased in the past), and try it out in Swift.
One approach I haven’t been as successful with is writing some new functionality in an existing Objective-C app in Swift. It can be done, but I find switching between the two to be less efficient. Plus, although the way Swift interacts with the existing Cocoa APIs is improving, it will still feel more clunky than just calling things from Objective-C.
Also, don’t start reading all of the hardcore Swift blogs right away. They bring up cool points, but are too specific and detailed to be useful at first. I found them confusing and overwhelming. However, now four months in to writing Swift almost every day, I have found myself revisiting some of the older posts, and better understanding the concepts they were trying to explore. The WWDC 2015 Swift videos are also nice to watch once you have a bit of practical Swift under your belt.
It will feel frustrating at first - Swift code will take you probably twice as long to write as equivalent Objective-C, and you’ll still be looking things up and fighting compiler errors. Once you have working Swift, it will probably just be Objective-C style, but written in Swift. THIS IS FINE. You spent years building up your Objective-C skills - they are not going to be as easy to discard for a newer, shinier language.
But, when it comes time to create something new, consider Swift. You will end up writing significantly less code overall. As you become comfortable with optionals, value types, and the class/protocol model, you will slowly start to change your style and write more “Swift”-ly. Only then start following Swift blogs. You should also keep an eye on the future of the language that is unfolding on Github. No point in getting attached to a language feature that is destined to disappear (I’m looking at you, c-style for loops…) Give the Xcode migrator less to do by starting to follow future conventions today.
I wrote two apps for AppleTV entirely in Swift. The first went pretty slowly. It felt like I was not only learning a new programming language, but the Cocoa APIs as well. Concepts that seemed so clear when reading the Swift docs seemed more complicated in practice. However, the next Swift app I wrote for AppleTV was essentially written in three days. I now have a hard time bringing myself back to Objective-C. I had written in Objective-C since 1992, and have been surprised by how quickly and completely I want to just stay in Swift.
And then, once you’re ready for it, definitely check out Erica Sadun’s new book, The Swift Developer’s Cookbook. This book is Hard Core, but in a totally amazing way. If you want to start writing code that is not warmed-over Objective-C, and takes advantage of some of the truly cool language features of Swift, this is the book for you. I’m working through it slowly, but find that I am learning something new in every chapter. It is to be savored and digested gradually (ha! because it’s a cookbook! didn’t even to mean to make that pun…).
Here’s to a 2016 is filled with great apps written in Swift!
Because of their ergonomics episode, I finally took the plunge and bought a standing desk. I’ll talk more about that in a separate post, but it has been a really positive experience.
I was surprised by their take on Swift, though. Both developers were emphatically in the “no-Swift-for-me” camp for now. This post is my take on moving to Swift, and what I see as the benefits and drawbacks to doing so at this time.
For the new year, give Swift a try. The barrier to entry is low. Every developer has XCode, and its Swift support just keeps getting better. I can understand the reluctance during the Swift 1.0 days. I didn’t play with it then much, either. I found Playgrounds slow, and the compiler crash-prone. Everyone who was talking about Swift seemed to have jumped right into the deep end of complexity with discussions of functional programming and obscure language features.
But, things have improved. Apple has put together a lovely tutorial where they walk you through a nontrivial iOS app using Swift (no temperature converters here!) Start there and just see how you like it. Many of the tutorials on raywenderlich.com have been re-written in Swift. Take one you’ve done before (or a book you’ve purchased in the past), and try it out in Swift.
One approach I haven’t been as successful with is writing some new functionality in an existing Objective-C app in Swift. It can be done, but I find switching between the two to be less efficient. Plus, although the way Swift interacts with the existing Cocoa APIs is improving, it will still feel more clunky than just calling things from Objective-C.
Also, don’t start reading all of the hardcore Swift blogs right away. They bring up cool points, but are too specific and detailed to be useful at first. I found them confusing and overwhelming. However, now four months in to writing Swift almost every day, I have found myself revisiting some of the older posts, and better understanding the concepts they were trying to explore. The WWDC 2015 Swift videos are also nice to watch once you have a bit of practical Swift under your belt.
It will feel frustrating at first - Swift code will take you probably twice as long to write as equivalent Objective-C, and you’ll still be looking things up and fighting compiler errors. Once you have working Swift, it will probably just be Objective-C style, but written in Swift. THIS IS FINE. You spent years building up your Objective-C skills - they are not going to be as easy to discard for a newer, shinier language.
But, when it comes time to create something new, consider Swift. You will end up writing significantly less code overall. As you become comfortable with optionals, value types, and the class/protocol model, you will slowly start to change your style and write more “Swift”-ly. Only then start following Swift blogs. You should also keep an eye on the future of the language that is unfolding on Github. No point in getting attached to a language feature that is destined to disappear (I’m looking at you, c-style for loops…) Give the Xcode migrator less to do by starting to follow future conventions today.
I wrote two apps for AppleTV entirely in Swift. The first went pretty slowly. It felt like I was not only learning a new programming language, but the Cocoa APIs as well. Concepts that seemed so clear when reading the Swift docs seemed more complicated in practice. However, the next Swift app I wrote for AppleTV was essentially written in three days. I now have a hard time bringing myself back to Objective-C. I had written in Objective-C since 1992, and have been surprised by how quickly and completely I want to just stay in Swift.
And then, once you’re ready for it, definitely check out Erica Sadun’s new book, The Swift Developer’s Cookbook. This book is Hard Core, but in a totally amazing way. If you want to start writing code that is not warmed-over Objective-C, and takes advantage of some of the truly cool language features of Swift, this is the book for you. I’m working through it slowly, but find that I am learning something new in every chapter. It is to be savored and digested gradually (ha! because it’s a cookbook! didn’t even to mean to make that pun…).
Here’s to a 2016 is filled with great apps written in Swift!
