 My nostalgia for the '80s brings back so many fond memories — John Hughes movies, Garbage Pail Kids, the cat-murdering, extraterrestrial otherwise known as Alf, and ah, yes, of course, with true sentimental yearning, the birth of Objective-C.
This C-based language was born to two loving parents in the early 1980s. Like our wistful desire to reminisce over our mix-tape collections, so too is our nostalgia for the language that has become the basis of most Apple software. Right?
Well, Apple, the cultural icon, has lost that loving feeling for the Gen-X baby and isn’t looking back. They have forged ahead to create an entirely new language: Swift. Nerds everywhere are in a flurry.
It’s supposedly a more hassle-free language of sorts. A faster, more effective means of development. Which means more time to watch cat videos. Woohoo! But, while it may make the lives of some developers easier, there are some pitfalls ahead.
Developers will need time to learn this new Apple-specific language. It also creates a wedge between iOS development and the rest of the software development ecosystem (everyone loves a buzzword). This means developers will need to use two languages for multi-platform apps. How will this affect app development? Will Swift fade into oblivion, like so many other coding languages promising dreams of a grander life? Or as Punky Brewster would say, is resistance futile? Hmm, I feel like that’s not right.
Well, whoever said it, is it just a matter of time before we are beaming up Swift apps to the masses?
|
