The new Swift language is being assessed by some of the best developers in the world and they are in hot debate as to the utility of the language as compared to Objective-C. My interpretation of the debate, at the time of this writing, is there is a sense of loss over the “messaging” aspects of Objective-C. I’m not going jump in on that debate because, while I’m a 30 year veteran of software development, I’m not a language expert. In addition, I have not yet adopted Swift in my limited programing responsibilities. I, however, do want to discuss Swift from a business owners perspective.
Swift Adoption - Means Less Code Written
This is obvious because the long standing .h file in C/C++ and Objective-C has been eliminated. This is fantastic news! This alone will save programing time, and time is money. In addition, Swift has a number of ways to short hand syntax that will result in even less code written. I believe the language has more to offer in the area of productivity as we progress in its adoption.
Swift Investment - Learning Takes Time
For Software Ops to adopt Swift it means that initial investment will be made by our engineers and by my business. There is a learning curve to learn anything new. That will take time and that will cost my business in the short run. In addition, I see no short term value in making claims that Software Ops writes code in Swift. I see Swift as a short term value for us if we can gain programing productivity.
Swift Adaptation - The Language Has Idiosyncrasies
Once we adopt the language then the next step is adapt to benefits of the language. In other words, we will also have to think in the language of Swift. This will be the most challenging aspect of Swift adoption. Can the engineering staff both adapt their thoughts and actions to the paradigm that is Swift, and can they adapt it to our specific practices to produce superior results for our clients?
Swift Exploitation - The Ultimate Outcome
Once the language is fully understood and fully adopted by Software Ops, will we be in position to fully exploit Swift to our benefit and that of our clients. Software Ops is committed to doing this before our competition, faster then our competition, and persisting in its usage. Software Ops will produce software that is faster to write, more free of bugs due to language features, and more performant on device.