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Comment by ajanuary | Hacker News Reader

This being the only code sample of swift I've seen, my overriding takeaway is that for the basic stuff it's remarkably similar to Objective-C with a lick of paint.

If people really take to swift, it'll be interesting to see if that's because it creates a shift in programming style, or because people really are just afraid of small syntactical differences.

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After skimming through the code and knowing that it was a job that took only four hours, it's very likely that this is just objective-c code written in swift(as the saying goes, you can write java in any language). It will take a bit more time to learn the idiomatic swift style and implementation.

Part of the reason it looks like that is because I don't really know swift all that well. One of the great things we have in Swift is more functional features like closures, named functions, etc. I expect we'll see a lot of higher-order functions being used and that would clean it up a lot.

Readability matters - maybe the Objective-C verbiage melts away once you're up to speed, but it certainly puts you off wanting to get there.

That's always been the intuition. If swift maintains a distinct Objective-C style but with more approachable syntax, then that suggests the intuition is true.

I find obj-c super readable, other people don't? I mean, take two hours to get used to the bracket syntax for message sending and it's super readable although a bit verbose?

Same here.

All you have to do is get over named parameters, square bracket message passing, and overall verbosity, and you know enough to read/understand Objective-C code.

If you can get past those three differences, Objective-C is remarkably similar to Java and other OOP languages.

Personally, I love the verbosity. The code pretty much just explains itself.

Swift is a welcomed change though. I'm very optimistic and excited about the future of iOS going forward.

Please take this in good humour but I couldn't resist:

> All you have to do is get over named parameters, square bracket message passing, and overall verbosity

Translation: "All you have to do is get over it's poor readability and it's quite readable!"

> Objective-C is remarkably similar to Java and other OOP languages.

Translation: "Objective-C is as readable as several other unreadable languages".

;-)

Readability isn't about familiarity as much as it's about clarity and a lack of boilerplate. Verbosity is in most cases the antithesis if readability. I think there can be exceptions (maybe some verbose DSLs that manage to map cleanly from your brain to the code on the page) but if the verbosity comes from boilerplate or visual clutter then verbosity is a strong point against.

Swift is definitely more approachable than Objective-C for new developers.

I would imagine that is very on the reasons for creating it.

For new developers, or for developers coming from other languages?

I think a lot of the trouble people have with starting to develop apps for Apple platforms actually comes from trying to figure out the APIs and style, while at the same time battling against unfamiliar syntax. From the little I've seen, Swift doesn't change the first part of that very much.

Both. The APIs and style sure are issues.

But there are plenty of language constructs which exist only in Objective-C.

I think both. I have a young cousin who is starting to show interest in programming, and when I think of showing her Objective-C, I grimace inside because it has taken me so long to become comfortable with it, and I'm coming from other languages and years of experience. But I think I can walk through Swift with her, and we can learn it at the same time - me bridging the gaps because I come from another language, and her learning how to program for the first time.

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