“Developers are still going nuts for Apple’s new Swift programming language,” Klint Finley reports for Wired.
“Since it was introduced last summer, Swift just jumped from number 68 to number 22 in the language rankings from research and analyst firm RedMonk,” Finley reports. “The rankings seeks to gauge how interested programmers are in different languages.”
“That growth is unprecedented in the firm’s rankings, analyst Stephen O’Grady wrote in a blog post about the findings. By comparison, Google’s programming language Go, introduced in 2009, only just broke into the top 20 this quarter,” Finley reports. “That’s not bad considering the top languages in the rankings are still venerable languages like Java, JavaScript, PHP and C++, but it’s nowhere near as meteoric as Swift’s rise.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Why Apple’s Swift language will instantly remake computer programming – July 14, 2014
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I don’t see any graphics commands, so it looks like you have to use cocoa.
I want a SuperBASIC that takes your BASIC program and translates it into Swift and Cocoa.
What this means is you NEVER have to write in objective at all.
SuperBASIC takes your BASIC program, and REwrites it in Objective/cocoa so you NEVER NEED to write it in Swift/Objective C EVER.
I couldn’t swallow a word of that.
I’ll say it: bollocks
He said he’s OK with 40% more bugs in his programs. 😉
Cocoa is an API. Regardless what language you’re using, you still have to make use of the routines and libraries that Apple provides.
Graphics commands? Not sure what you mean? There’s the CG API (Core Graphics) you can use from either Objective-C or Swift.
why not just learn the native language and be done with it?
All modern languages have the same basic constructs and ideas implemented in them.
If you learn the foundations of programming you can switch to another language without much effort. Its all largely syntax and working with something like a hash list in Swift is not going to be that different from working with one in another high level language such as Java or C#.
I write all my comments in Swift
I’ve been following the great Stanford iOS programming class on iTunes U, but using Swift in place of Objective-C. It’s been a great way to learn the new language. Although you do have to be careful not to fall into “The Objective-C Way” of coding and take advantage of Swift’s features.
I’m not feeling very Swift today. Your mileage may vary.
I couldn’t swallow a word of that……
Meaning what?
So some time back a company made something called FutureBasic. They were working on taking a program you would write iin Basic, and translate that to C language. I mean when it was done, your now translated BasicToC worked at EXACTLY the SAME speed as C, because it then WAS a C program.
The sane COULD be done WITHOUT using cocoa !
The idea is Your BASIC program would be a complete translation.
Meaning……
You write it ONLY in BASIC in the first place.
The ease of BASIC and the total speed of Swift/Cocoa/Objective C.
Now, where can I buy this?
Back in 1983 (?) Microsoft came out with the “basic compiler”. I was on CP/M and ZDOS back then.
It was intended to compile BASIC into machine native code. It worked.
I don’t know FutureBasic or any other flavor. I stopped using BASIC in 1984/5.
The issue here is BASIC as a foundation for a structured MVC model application just can’t work. Any program of any complexity would quickly become unmanageable on BASIC.
I don’t know about you, but I simply avoid “goto” statements. And with BASIC this is a required construct.
You just can’t follow GOTO’s in real life.
Now fast forward to the nineties. Microsoft came out with Visual Basic. I bastardization of predefined OO objects and variants of BASIC syntax. The sole purpose (IMO) of providing a scripting language for Microsoft Access, Word, and Excel and included a really really inefficient and complex ‘variant’ mechanism.
People made a lot of money writing Visual Basic for Access and Excel Users. Some great business problems were solved with the language on Microsoft’s platform.
For those of us, including me, that did anything complex with VB; we really didn’t enjoy importing and binding Windows API dll’s and writing C to VB data structure transformations.
BASIC today looks nothing like BASIC I the 1980’s or even 1990’s.
The question you have to ask yourself is: given the platform of choice (we are speaking iOS here) have bindings been made for you from the native API to the language constructs or will you have to write your own bindings?
I can tell you that you do NOT want to write your own bindings. Just ask the authors of WINE. It’s probably safe to say Apple will not provide bindings to any BASIC variant: only Swift and C/C++/obj-C. The authors of any BASIC language will have to write their own to publish to developers. And how long will that support last.
The syntax of Swift and Obj-C is not that hard. Really. So if you are a BASIC programmer, you could probably pick up the language quickly, and take advantage of the documentation that will have only Swift and Obj-C examples and hints.
BASIC isn’t really a viable option for creating a robust complex app. Really.
This is my opinion, you may disagree.
The ease of BASIC? What does that even mean? How is BASIC easier than other languages? I think you’re talking about the complexities of the API’s and not necessarily the language. All a programming language does is define a syntax to facilitate the control and flow of code execution.
It’s the API’s that allow your program to interact with the system. Even the simplest of C programs…
main() {
printf(“Hello World!”);
}
…makes use of an API; the standard input and output library (stdio)
‘printf’ is not a part of the C language, it’s just a function that’s loaded in from an external library at compile time.
I haven’t programmed in BASIC in over 30 years, so I don’t know what BASIC you’re using, but unless it has API’s that have a corresponding match in Cocoa, then there’s no way you can simply translate that program.
I was really interested in Swift when it was announced.
I joined the developer program, downloaded the latest release…
It sucks.
Wake me up when they have decent string functions available. Oh, and exception handling, too. Don’t even get me started about the performance difference between ObjC and Swift…
Those than can will use Swift those that can’t will die.
Young whippersnappers! Swift more popular than FORTRAN? Bah humbug.
Fortran? Humbug! Why we had to code assembler in hex — both ways! The kids these days…
10 VOTE 5 STARS IF YOU REMEMBER
20 GOTO 10
RUN
OMG. Just those two lines made my eyes glaze over and gave me a headache. I forgot about the all caps.
!Syntax Error at line 10
10 PRINT “VOTE 5 STARS IF YOU REMEMBER”
20 GOTO 10
RUN
Better? lol
Just goes to show how efficient these old languages are 😉
That was fast
😀