What is the future of Objective-C?

Will Apple continue to support it, or will we wake up one day to find that Swift is the only viable language?


It's a serious question. Careers depend on it. I don't accept the "No comment" approach that Apple usually takes. It's cruel.


I'm willing to put the time into learning Swift if I have to. I'm not going to do it if I don't. I want to know.


Frank

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  • Work in a big tech company "MAMMA" as is called today, can't tell which one due to and NDA, a LOT of our codebase still Objc and there is no plans to move a single line, so rest assure Objc will be very alive at least in big tech projects, now for startups or some other projects Swift is ramping up quickly, but I worked in another company that had Objc code base and eventually we started moving to Swift, but it was always a combination of both worlds. Objc still as powerful as C/C++ today.

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Swift sucks. I’m slowly abandoning Apple because of it and Mac OS is starting to look like iOS. Apple is punishing developers who don’t conform to their ****** swift language.

a good example of suckiness. https://github.com/Flying-Toast/swift-sucks

  • Let’s not forget the horrid WWDC in the past several years. Inclusivity in software development….seriously? *** Apple!

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Long story short, Swift is mostly about politics.

I became a Software Developer basically because of MacOS-X and Objective-C. I just love the syntax, yes it can become a mess sometimes with all the nested brackets but it is pretty unique. Apple has been known for shaving layers of products and technologies (PowerPC WebObjects Carbon ...) so I wouldn't be surprised but I will be really disappointed. With Carbon Apple initially announced MacOS X and Cocoa and never mentioned anything about getting rid of it but they eventually did.

Regarding Swift it has nice things but the syntax is kind of boring tbh. I always wondered why Apple went with a new syntax instead of modernize Objective-C get rid of some redundancy and add new things like lambdas and so on. My hypothesis is that the original generation of Apple/Next developers were displaced by the new people coming from the Windows and GNU world that got in after the success of the iPhone.

Swift & Objective-C are going to be around for some time yet, sometimes one is required to add @objc in swift when they isn't not one single line of Objective-C code.

Swift is good for the right App, tho in some types of Apps Swift is totally the wrong language and Objective-C, C or C++ is best. Swift can work with Objective-C, C & C++ and the four when used appropriately is the best course of action, never design your App in one Language , keep your options open.