Swift

[Alex Spencer]

Does anybody know if swift is backwards compatible?

[Dave DeLong]

Yes

On Jun 2, 2014, at 1:19 PM, Alex Spencer <alexande...@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anybody know if swift is backwards compatible?

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[Alex Spencer]

So cool! I've always loathed the [init alloc] and crazy syntax of obj-C. That is so cool that you can run swift apps on ios7 / 6 as well!!

[Dave DeLong]

It’s backwards compatible to iOS 7, not iOS 6.

Dave

[Alex Spencer]

Thanks for the heads up, Dave.

[Ontario Britton]

Hi CCHeads-

  Something I'm not clear on from the EULA- can we publicly discuss and post Swift code now since it's announced and a book is published by Apple on it? Also, please remind me of the prohibitions on sharing screenshots or code for iOS 8 projects we're starting now.

Thanks,

Tari

(801) 319-5477

ontariobritton.com

  

[Mark Suman]

The Swift Programming Guide is publicly available through iBooks, no developer account needed. I assume that means it's fair game to discuss. 

Not sure about iOS 8 screenshots. 

Mark

Sent from my iPhone

[Quinn Taylor]

But who’s still developing for iOS 6 still anyway? ;-)

[Bryan Bryce]

While we're on the topic, how long do you think Objective-C will be relevant? I noticed in the platforms state of the union they said they were going to be pretty aggressive about adopting Swift.

On Monday, June 2, 2014 2:29:39 PM UTC-6, Dave DeLong wrote:

It’s backwards compatible to iOS 7, not iOS 6.

Dave

On Jun 2, 2014, at 1:25 PM, Alex Spencer <alz...@gmail.com> wrote:

So cool! I've always loathed the [init alloc] and crazy syntax of obj-C. That is so cool that you can run swift apps on ios7 / 6 as well!!

On Monday, June 2, 2014, Dave DeLong <daved...@me.com> wrote:

Yes

On Jun 2, 2014, at 1:19 PM, Alex Spencer <alexande...@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anybody know if swift is backwards compatible?

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[Sean Clark Hess]

I don't think people will develop in Objective-C except for legacy applications. Swift seems very complete, uses the same frameworks, and is better than Objective-C in almost every way I can tell. Also it appears you can use it file-by-file, so I imagine existing code bases slowly porting over too. 

[Bryan Bryce]

That's crazy that a language will go from being so popular to being a dead language in a year or so!

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[Bryan Bryce]

Part of the reason I mentioned that is because I noticed a lot of the WWDC sample code is still in Objective-C.

[Kyle Clegg]

I think it's crazy that 2 days ago being an Objective-C developer seemed like the most secure job out there. Nope.

Kyle Clegg

kyleclegg.com

twitter.com/kyle_clegg

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kyle-clegg/18/156/640

[Sean Clark Hess]

Well framework and platform knowledge has always mattered more than language syntax. Syntax is really easy to pick up. Understanding when to use GCD queues, isn't. So all the knowledge that matters you'll carry with you. It won't take much time to get up to speed for any good Obj-C dev. 

[Bryan Bryce]

I'm going to start referring to myself as a Cocoa Developer ;)

[Bart Whiteley]

Kyle Clegg wrote:

> I think it's crazy that 2 days ago being an Objective-C developer seemed like the most secure job out there. Nope.

Hah!  That was an illusion even last week.  Kids these days...  ;)

Also, What Sean said: languages are easy to pick up. Platforms, Frameworks, etc. are less so. 

[Sean Clark Hess]

Unfortunately recruiters and business types don't understand the above principle and they'll still be advertising for Swift developers :) 5+ years required!

[Alex Esplin]

Going to make my grey-beardy plug for not forgetting C.

Swift is cool, and people are already doing amazing things with it (I saw a ray tracer somewhere) but registers, hexadecimal, and memory addresses are still real, and the computer doesn't understand anything other.

I know not everybody wants to (or could if they wanted) be an OS or compiler engineer, but understanding how things work helps you write better programs, even in such a high level language as Swift.

--
Alex Esplin

[Bryan Bryce]

Amen.

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[Mark Suman]

I had an exchange with a JavaScript engineer one time. I told him that his web app was putting my computer into swap. His response, "Not possible. JavaScript doesn't deal with memory. It must be something else on your system."

#NeverForget

Mark

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[Bryan Bryce]

So I'm starting to hear more about the functional programming side of Swift. Is functional programming becoming such a big thing because concurrency will get more important as Moore's Law begins to collapse? http://www.extremetech.com/computing/165331-intels-former-chief-architect-moores-law-will-be-dead-within-a-decade

[Jason Larsen]

Yes, I think a big part of the increasing popularity of functional programming is because of concurrency. But also there are just a lot of really nice elegant patterns that make dealing with data easier to think about than some object-oriented design patterns.

[Bryan Bryce]

@Jason Larsen Do you know of any good resources for learning functional programming concepts/design patterns?

[Jason Larsen]

Probably mostly from learning functional programming languages.

I started this book back when I was playing with clojure a few months ago and it was good. It does all the patterns in clojure and in scala. http://pragprog.com/book/mbfpp/functional-programming-patterns-in-scala-and-clojure

[Sean Clark Hess]

@Bryan, I just gave a talk on this at UtahJS. It's JS-based but the principles still apply. Basically, approaching code as a practice in composing small, functional tools is a great way to go

The talk if interested: https://github.com/seanhess/functional-javascript

I got started learning Haskell. Be warned it will break your brain. It will teach you functional and the more advanced type system. 

There are SO MANY cool concepts I first learned from Haskell in swift. It's part of what makes me like it. 

[Robert Brown]

Functional programming has many benefits outside of concurrency. However, I believe that concurrency will be one of the biggest driving factors to adopt FP. One of the reasons why we don’t see consumer-level computers with 100+ processors is because developers simply don’t know how to take advantage of this kind of hardware. 

One of the key reasons why FP is great for concurrency is that it advocates immutability. If state can't be changed, then race conditions disappear. This and other features allow developers to work at higher levels. When building large-scale distributed systems, devs can’t be concerned about menial problems such as memory management and exception handling. There are bigger and more important problems to solve. We really want to spend our time working on the overall architecture of our apps.

One thing to note is that Swift is not an FP language. It, however, incorporates many FP techniques. Looking back on the past decade, many third-generation languages have been doing the same. Just about any major language supports blocks, closures, lambdas, or whatever else you want to call them. It’s nice to see this adoption, but it’s not enough if we want to see truly concurrent systems. 

Just like Jason mentioned, there are many great books on PragProg for FP. Scala and Clojure are great languages. For more than a year I’ve been working with Erlang and Elixir. (http://pragprog.com/book/elixir/programming-elixir http://pragprog.com/book/jaerlang2/programming-erlang) I chose them because I love building occurrent systems, and I believe Erlang/Elixir can achieve better scale than other languages. However, there are many other great FP languages available such as Haskell or Lisp. Feel free to pick any one you like. Even if you don’t use an FP language as your main language, it will change and improve how you program in other languages. 

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ROBERT BROWN

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iOS Developer / Software architect

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RAIN / mediarain.com

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P / 801.802.6464

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NEW YORK / UTAH / NICARAGUA

[Bryan Bryce]

Thanks for the tips Jason, I hadn't heard of this bookstore yet, good to know it exists. Hey Sean, thanks for the advice, I'll check out your talk. Thanks again Robert, I'm getting more interested in Elixir everyday, maybe that'll be my foray into FP.

[Bryan Bryce]

So, I know it's been a month, but I found a resource that some people might be interested in, it's a book called Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. The several languages were chosen to as to highlight the differences/strengths/weaknesses with different programming paradigms and has an emphasis on understanding FP. My plan is to read this book and then jump into Elixir. After that I'll be able to approach learning Swift with a deeper understanding of languages, or that is the hope at least :)

[Dave DeLong]

…. Actual working link: Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages (Pragmatic Programmers)

Dave

On Jul 9, 2014, at 8:39 AM, Bryan Bryce <bryan...@gmail.com> wrote:

So, I know it's been a month, but I found a resource that some people might be interested in, it's a book called Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. The several languages were chosen to as to highlight the differences/strengths/weaknesses with different programming paradigms and has an emphasis on understanding FP. My plan is to read this book and then jump into Elixir. After that I'll be able to approach learning Swift with a deeper understanding of languages, or that is the hope at least :)

[Robert Brown]

The second edition of the book includes Elixir. Seven More Languages in Seven Weeks: Languages That Are Shaping The Future

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ROBERT BROWN

..............................................

iOS Developer / Software architect

..............................................

RAIN / mediarain.com

..............................................

P / 801.802.6464

..............................................

NEW YORK / UTAH / NICARAGUA

[Bryan Bryce]

Woah! I hadn't seen that before. Thanks!