Re: GNUstep's lack of progress and Apple's holding back Swift language

[Gregory Casamento]

James,

Unfortunately, in spite of it being "useless and boring" it is also
necessary since it will likely become the defacto language on Apple
platforms supplanting ObjC.   Personally, having some experience with
Swift, I don't understand why it's perceived to be better than ObjC.
It's syntax is closer to C or C++ but incorporates "named" parameters
(something which is a proposed feature of the newest C++ standard, I
may add).   It seems that the reason so many people are happy about
Swift is because it's NOT ObjC, for whatever sense that makes.

Swift does make it easier to detect some issues because it is strongly
typed.   This is what the whole "optionals" features is all about.

It would be wonderful if more people would help port apps and
implement those APIs which are required to support them.

GC

On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 6:36 PM, James Carthew <jcarthew@gmail.com> wrote:
> Frankly I find Swift to be both boring and useless. I'd much rather see
> things like quartzcore and webkit be completely ported to GNUstep than waste
> time on yet another programming language. The more Cocoa/NextStep API that
> gets ported, the more apps/uses for GNUstep will appear. I see Swift as a
> really bad use of developer resources. It hasn't had enough uptake to
> matter/influence the major APIs.
>
> On 3 April 2015 at 05:54, Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> John,
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 1:56 PM, John W Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net>
>> wrote:
>> > On 2015-04-02 06:03:52 +0000, Gregory Casamento said:
>> >>
>> >> Apple is withholding Swift for one reason only and that is because
>> >> they want to keep it Apple-only so that it makes applications less
>> >> portable.
>> >
>> >
>> > I suppose the fact that it isn't entirely stable yet has nothing to do
>> > with
>> > it? (The current Xcode beta includes a Swift-to-Swift translator.)
>>
>> I'm not sure lack of stability has anything to do with it either.
>> Swift itself as a language is fairly stable.  The compiler doesn't
>> crash and it is a very well defined language.
>>
>> I very much doubt Apple will EVER release Swift as open source.  Not
>> in a million years.   I hope I'm wrong.
>>
>> GC
>> --
>> Gregory Casamento
>> GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
>> http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
>> http://ind.ie/phoenix/
>>
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>
>
>
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-- 
Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
http://ind.ie/phoenix/