The Swift Progamming Language...

[commodorejohn]

It's Objective-Pascal. Did the world really need this? Whatever, I'm never going to do any iOS development anyway.

[commodorejohn]

The problem with Java is that it's a solid language saddled with a horrible library and runtime. They should've gone back to the drawing board when they first realized that they'd made "integer" both a primitive and an object type.

[commodorejohn]

Python feels dated because it's such a throwback - an interpreted, dynamically-typed language where whitespace counts as part of the syntax? A language where each version is subtly incompatible, so you may wind up needing several different installs of the runtime on the same computer? It's like a little piece of the '80s and their semi-infinite number of bizarre one-off language variants for one particular brand of home computer somehow bubbled up into the present and accreted elements from newer trends.

It also feels dated because it's taken up Visual Basic's mantle as "the quick-and-easy programming language everybody uses to hack up small utility programs so you inevitably have to go to an entirely different website and download another program in order to run the program you just downloaded" - at least where .NET hasn't filled that role. (I'll say one thing for Python, at least its runtime isn't in the hundreds of megabytes.)

[commodorejohn]

Chill, dude. I never said that Python was objectively terrible. I've used it myself, and while it's not my language of choice, I can see why people like it. I said it feels dated, which it does, because there's so many things about it that remind of the weird old days. '80s synth-driven pop-rock feels dated, too, and I don't dislike that either.

[commodorejohn]

If that is their aim, it would be a little baffling. Microsoft and Windows RT have just given everybody a terrific object lesson in what happens when you try to induce migration to a locked-down platform from an open one - either you leave in legacy compatibility because you can't afford not to have it (as Windows 8 does,) in which case everybody goes "well, that's all right for you, then, have fun with that new thing, we'll just be over here working on the platform we're comfortable and familiar with and aren't limited by," or they cut legacy support in hopes of forcing developers to migrate (as Windows RT does,) in which case everybody goes "...yeah, maybe we'll just not bother supporting it, then. Don't worry, we'll still keep doing development for your popular previous platform, though!"

You can't make customers accept the product you want to be making, whether those customers are end-users or developers. Microsoft's just put on a big public demonstration of that fact. I find it hard to imagine that Apple could've failed to take notice.

[commodorejohn]

That would be why I said "if."

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, it's another language predicated on the belief that it's the language that is the Source of All Bad Code and not poorly-educated programmers with sloppy mental habits, so if you just change the language to make errors impossible, why, you'll never have any bugs! Just like the last dozen would-be Saviors of Programming.

But I suppose if they're not going to do any serious amount of QA on App Store submissions, they might as well try and get the compiler to do it for them.