Ask HN: I'm a Swift dev. Should I learn Obj-C if I want to get an iOS job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I'm a Swift dev. Should I learn Obj-C if I want to get an iOS job?

3 pointschicobermuda10 comments

I've been coding in Swift for one year, with some comprehensive apps, including one published on the App Store. I want to get an iOS developer job, but opportunities in Swift are still fairly limited.

Should I take a few months to learn Objective-C and publish an app to the Store? Or should I stick with Swift and try to master it?

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Odds are that while you'll write software in swift, you'll probably encounter other people's code written in Obj-C. This could come either from inherited code (ex:project you took over) or open-source components you may use. It's best to have some familiarity with Obj-C, that way you can at least navigate and understand the logic.

I've been an iOS developer for a little over 4 years now. I think you should invest some time on learning Objective-C. If you are looking to join an existing company there is a very high probability that they will have existing apps, some perhaps with very large codebases, written in Objective-C.

As a professional iOS developer you will be expected to be able to make modifications to these Objective-C apps. Even if the app is in "maintenance mode" you'll still probably have to be able to fix bugs in the old code base.

Even for Objective-C apps that are actively being ported to Swift, you'll need to know Objective-C to handle the interop between the two languages as you slowly rewrite a large code base.

I'd be willing to hire a junior iOS developer who only knew Swift with the expectation that they learn Objective-C on the job. But it would be major bonus points in the interview if they already had some proficiency with Objective-C.

There is still a ton of objc code in production so it's still very important to be able to work with it. That being said Swift is definitely what you should focus on.

Above that, work towards mastering Foundation, UIKit and the other core iOS frameworks.

How hard could it be to learn a different language? Good engineers can write in any language.

What a troll...

A company should hire for the ability to engineer software, not on how much of language X's API they've memorized. Language really doesn't matter too much. Theory is what is important.