The push for server side Swift is interesting in that it embodies the philosophy of moving Swift to other platforms/arenas.
Sent from my iPhone > On Oct 15, 2019, at 8:57 AM, Turtle Creek Software via Cocoa-dev > <cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com> wrote: > > This discussion about Swift vs Objective-C is interesting, but I think it > omits something important. Both those languages only build apps for Apple > products. > > It's not such a big deal for iOS. iPhones are dominant enough that people > can write just for that. Phone/pad apps are also relatively small, so a > rewrite for Android is not too difficult if you want to go cross-platform. > > For PCs it's a different story. Mac has about 10% market share overall, but > it varies. In our market, architects are about 20% Mac, engineers less than > 1%, construction maybe 2%. The apps are bigger and more complex. Nobody > is every going to write a full CAD, project management or business > accounting app in either Swift or Obj-C. > > TurtleSoft has a big investment in C++ source code that's full of > construction business logic. Unfortunately, with the death of Carbon its > future value is in doubt. > > I just checked a half dozen sites that measure popularity of programming > languages. The Stack Overflow survey seemed the best, since they directly > asked folks what they use. For 2019, their top 5 app-development languages > are Python, Java, C#, C++ and C in that order. 42% of respondents use > Python, down to 20% for C. Interestingly, there is a huge gap after that. > Their next most popular app-dev language is Go at 8.8%. Swift rated 6.6% > and Objective-C was 4.8%. Then there is a long, long tail of other > languages with a few % or less. > > PYPL puts the top 5 in the same order. TIOBE index ranks them as Java, C, > Python, C++, C#. Both those lists put Obj-C ahead of Swift, with the Apple > languages well ahead of Go. > > Popularity is important. Those top few languages are frequently-used for > reasons. Many people and organizations are working to improve them. High > schools and colleges teach them. They have a wide range of books and > tutorials. Good libraries and open source projects. Lots of blogs and Stack > Overflow answers. Job opportunities. Success breeds success. > > I think it's fair to say that Python, Java and C++ deserve special respect > because they dominate so much. Call them the "mainstream". I'm excluding C > because it's more often used for low-level work, and C# because it's mostly > limited to Microsoft's ecosystem. > > The minor languages certainly have their fanatics. Some have corporate > sponsors. I'm sure Apple has fantastically talented and dedicated engineers > working on Swift and Objective C. Both have many good features. But they > are minority languages. It has an impact. We bought every book in existence > about Objective C and Swift. Read close to everything we could find online. > Looked at every archived post on this list. Built all of Apple's example > apps. It still wasn't enough to help us finish a Cocoa conversion in time. > > Even worse, the future for Mac is starting to look like a required Swift > front end to get new features (and maybe ARM compatibility). Using C++ at > all means having Objective-C in the middle. It just gets too complicated. > > Yesterday I checked up on a few other companies we know who have Mac > software in the AEC market. Most died off years ago. Two are now > Windows-only. Three will have 64-bit apps "soon". So far, nobody is ready > for Catalina yet. > > Casey McDermott > TurtleSoft.com > _______________________________________________ > > Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) > > Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. > Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com > > Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: > https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/zav%40mac.com > > This email sent to z...@mac.com _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
