Adding Obj-C syntax to Swift?

Perhaps one of the most disliked aspects of Swift

is the Rust-like syntax, which requires that each coder resign himself to

grin-and-bear-it in order to obtain the benefits of Swift.

Since "the writing is on the wall" that Objective C

is in its last days at least as far as app writers go

(maybe within Apple it will endure), is there any

chance of sweetening the pill a bit by giving us

back the more readable syntax of Objective C, in particular

the method call syntax? It just made more sense to

format a method call like Smalltalk.

Not quite sure what you mean. Swift is designed to be somewhat similar to C and C++; the “Rust-like” syntax is merely because Rust does it like C does.

···

On Jul 11, 2016, at 20:00, Ford Prefect via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Perhaps one of the most disliked aspects of Swift
is the Rust-like syntax, which requires that each coder resign himself to
grin-and-bear-it in order to obtain the benefits of Swift.
Since "the writing is on the wall" that Objective C
is in its last days at least as far as app writers go
(maybe within Apple it will endure), is there any
chance of sweetening the pill a bit by giving us
back the more readable syntax of Objective C, in particular
the method call syntax? It just made more sense to
format a method call like Smalltalk.
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

I'm personally not in favor of any change for which the main argument seems to be "I like it better this way".

Félix

···

Le 11 juil. 2016 à 20:00:14, Ford Prefect via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> a écrit :

Perhaps one of the most disliked aspects of Swift
is the Rust-like syntax, which requires that each coder resign himself to
grin-and-bear-it in order to obtain the benefits of Swift.
Since "the writing is on the wall" that Objective C
is in its last days at least as far as app writers go
(maybe within Apple it will endure), is there any
chance of sweetening the pill a bit by giving us
back the more readable syntax of Objective C, in particular
the method call syntax? It just made more sense to
format a method call like Smalltalk.
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

Hi Ford,

I’m sorry, but such a change is an additive feature, which is out of scope for Swift 3.0. We’ll have to carefully consider this proposal after the Swift 3 release is done.

HG2G,

-Chris

···

On Jul 11, 2016, at 8:00 PM, Ford Prefect via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Perhaps one of the most disliked aspects of Swift
is the Rust-like syntax, which requires that each coder resign himself to
grin-and-bear-it in order to obtain the benefits of Swift.
Since "the writing is on the wall" that Objective C
is in its last days at least as far as app writers go
(maybe within Apple it will endure), is there any
chance of sweetening the pill a bit by giving us
back the more readable syntax of Objective C, in particular
the method call syntax? It just made more sense to
format a method call like Smalltalk.

My reply didn’t go to the list… my apologies…

···

On Jul 11, 2016, at 8:19 PM, Ford Prefect <fordpre@mail.com<mailto:fordpre@mail.com>> wrote:

People say nearly every WWDC code example was Swift. That says to newcomers "learn Swift, not Obj C".
Swift is being ported on other platforms but Objective C is not.
Google has talked about switching to it, which may be unrelated but likely not since the Valley is a small place.

More people using Swift is great. But C is still used. C++ is used. Why does Obj-C need to go away for Swift to gain a larger dev base?

If Google starts to use Swift, do you see Java going away?

Obj-C has been here for awhile. Certainly before iOS and even before OS X. I don’t see it going away any time soon, even in those eco-systems.

Best,

Josh

Sent: Monday, July 11, 2016 at 8:03 PM
From: "Josh Parmenter" <jparmenter@vectorform.com<mailto:jparmenter@vectorform.com>>
To: "Ford Prefect" <fordpre@mail.com<mailto:fordpre@mail.com>>
Subject: Re: [swift-evolution] adding Obj-C syntax to Swift?
Where is this wall with writing you speak of?
My feeling is, if you want Obj-C syntax, why not use Obj-C? I actually don't get the feeling that access to it as a development language is really going away.
Best
Josh

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 11, 2016, at 20:00, Ford Prefect via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org<mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org><mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

Perhaps one of the most disliked aspects of Swift
is the Rust-like syntax, which requires that each coder resign himself to
grin-and-bear-it in order to obtain the benefits of Swift.
Since "the writing is on the wall" that Objective C
is in its last days at least as far as app writers go
(maybe within Apple it will endure), is there any
chance of sweetening the pill a bit by giving us
back the more readable syntax of Objective C, in particular
the method call syntax? It just made more sense to
format a method call like Smalltalk.
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org<mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org><mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

Regards
(From mobile)

My reply didn’t go to the list… my apologies…

People say nearly every WWDC code example was Swift. That says to newcomers "learn Swift, not Obj C".
Swift is being ported on other platforms but Objective C is not.
Google has talked about switching to it, which may be unrelated but likely not since the Valley is a small place.

More people using Swift is great. But C is still used. C++ is used. Why does Obj-C need to go away for Swift to gain a larger dev base?

If Google starts to use Swift, do you see Java going away?

It opens some interesting lines of thinking... Will google eventually become "the future of swift"? I would not be entirely surprised considering the man-power they have compared to apple, what they already did in the past in similar situations.

···

On Jul 12, 2016, at 6:22 AM, Josh Parmenter via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
On Jul 11, 2016, at 8:19 PM, Ford Prefect <fordpre@mail.com<mailto:fordpre@mail.com>> wrote:

Obj-C has been here for awhile. Certainly before iOS and even before OS X. I don’t see it going away any time soon, even in those eco-systems.

Best,

Josh

Sent: Monday, July 11, 2016 at 8:03 PM
From: "Josh Parmenter" <jparmenter@vectorform.com<mailto:jparmenter@vectorform.com>>
To: "Ford Prefect" <fordpre@mail.com<mailto:fordpre@mail.com>>
Subject: Re: [swift-evolution] adding Obj-C syntax to Swift?
Where is this wall with writing you speak of?
My feeling is, if you want Obj-C syntax, why not use Obj-C? I actually don't get the feeling that access to it as a development language is really going away.
Best
Josh

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 11, 2016, at 20:00, Ford Prefect via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org<mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org><mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

Perhaps one of the most disliked aspects of Swift
is the Rust-like syntax, which requires that each coder resign himself to
grin-and-bear-it in order to obtain the benefits of Swift.
Since "the writing is on the wall" that Objective C
is in its last days at least as far as app writers go
(maybe within Apple it will endure), is there any
chance of sweetening the pill a bit by giving us
back the more readable syntax of Objective C, in particular
the method call syntax? It just made more sense to
format a method call like Smalltalk.
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org<mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org><mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

Regards
(From mobile)

My reply didn’t go to the list… my apologies…

People say nearly every WWDC code example was Swift. That says to newcomers "learn Swift, not Obj C".
Swift is being ported on other platforms but Objective C is not.
Google has talked about switching to it, which may be unrelated but likely not since the Valley is a small place.

More people using Swift is great. But C is still used. C++ is used. Why does Obj-C need to go away for Swift to gain a larger dev base?

If Google starts to use Swift, do you see Java going away?

As of 2 years ago the google source code repo had more than 10Mloc of java. It might take a while to replace. Assuming they would adopt swift for android, i give it no more than 2 years for them to come with a fork having all the type-system enhancements apple does not want to add, in the spirit of how they did to the webkit code some of the refectoring the apple team did not want to do (i remember when they did the reorg many wanted or introduced the out of proc loading model first)

···

On Jul 12, 2016, at 6:22 AM, Josh Parmenter via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
On Jul 11, 2016, at 8:19 PM, Ford Prefect <fordpre@mail.com<mailto:fordpre@mail.com>> wrote:

Obj-C has been here for awhile. Certainly before iOS and even before OS X. I don’t see it going away any time soon, even in those eco-systems.

Best,

Josh

Sent: Monday, July 11, 2016 at 8:03 PM
From: "Josh Parmenter" <jparmenter@vectorform.com<mailto:jparmenter@vectorform.com>>
To: "Ford Prefect" <fordpre@mail.com<mailto:fordpre@mail.com>>
Subject: Re: [swift-evolution] adding Obj-C syntax to Swift?
Where is this wall with writing you speak of?
My feeling is, if you want Obj-C syntax, why not use Obj-C? I actually don't get the feeling that access to it as a development language is really going away.
Best
Josh

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 11, 2016, at 20:00, Ford Prefect via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org<mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org><mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

Perhaps one of the most disliked aspects of Swift
is the Rust-like syntax, which requires that each coder resign himself to
grin-and-bear-it in order to obtain the benefits of Swift.
Since "the writing is on the wall" that Objective C
is in its last days at least as far as app writers go
(maybe within Apple it will endure), is there any
chance of sweetening the pill a bit by giving us
back the more readable syntax of Objective C, in particular
the method call syntax? It just made more sense to
format a method call like Smalltalk.
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org<mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org><mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

I do not think it is likely, but it would be somewhat interesting if one day macOS and IOS were the only two platform using the least diffused/niche dialect of Swift while on Linux, Android, and Windows people were all using a dialect of Swift which became the de facto standard in the case Apple refused to merge the forked changes upstream.

···

Sent from my iPhone

On 12 Jul 2016, at 08:47, L. Mihalkovic via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Regards
(From mobile)

On Jul 12, 2016, at 6:22 AM, Josh Parmenter via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

My reply didn’t go to the list… my apologies…

On Jul 11, 2016, at 8:19 PM, Ford Prefect <fordpre@mail.com<mailto:fordpre@mail.com>> wrote:

People say nearly every WWDC code example was Swift. That says to newcomers "learn Swift, not Obj C".
Swift is being ported on other platforms but Objective C is not.
Google has talked about switching to it, which may be unrelated but likely not since the Valley is a small place.

More people using Swift is great. But C is still used. C++ is used. Why does Obj-C need to go away for Swift to gain a larger dev base?

If Google starts to use Swift, do you see Java going away?

It opens some interesting lines of thinking... Will google eventually become "the future of swift"? I would not be entirely surprised considering the man-power they have compared to apple, what they already did in the past in similar situations.

Obj-C has been here for awhile. Certainly before iOS and even before OS X. I don’t see it going away any time soon, even in those eco-systems.

Best,

Josh

Sent: Monday, July 11, 2016 at 8:03 PM
From: "Josh Parmenter" <jparmenter@vectorform.com<mailto:jparmenter@vectorform.com>>
To: "Ford Prefect" <fordpre@mail.com<mailto:fordpre@mail.com>>
Subject: Re: [swift-evolution] adding Obj-C syntax to Swift?
Where is this wall with writing you speak of?
My feeling is, if you want Obj-C syntax, why not use Obj-C? I actually don't get the feeling that access to it as a development language is really going away.
Best
Josh

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 11, 2016, at 20:00, Ford Prefect via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org<mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org><mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

Perhaps one of the most disliked aspects of Swift
is the Rust-like syntax, which requires that each coder resign himself to
grin-and-bear-it in order to obtain the benefits of Swift.
Since "the writing is on the wall" that Objective C
is in its last days at least as far as app writers go
(maybe within Apple it will endure), is there any
chance of sweetening the pill a bit by giving us
back the more readable syntax of Objective C, in particular
the method call syntax? It just made more sense to
format a method call like Smalltalk.
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org<mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org><mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution