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The strategies and challenges involved in developing new programming languages such as Swift



WWDC 2014 was unquestionably one of the best Apple events in years. While there were no hardware announcements, developers and Apple enthusiasts at large were treated to a two hour event chock-full of surprises, not the least of which was the introduction of an entirely new programming language Apple calls Swift.

A project in the making since 2010, Swift's selling point is that developers can more simply and intuitively put together advanced iOS apps. With the introduction of Swift, Apple now adds its name to a respectable list of companies that have similarly attempted to ably craft their future by rolling out new programming languages.

On that note, Scott Rosenberg has an immersive post up on Medium detailing the seemingly increased effort from large tech companies to create their own programming languages. The article focuses mostly on Google's Go and Apple's Swift, and provides a good read for anyone interested in the benefits, challenges, history behind and strategies involved in creating a new programming language from scratch.

The article also includes a number of interesting and optimistic soundbites on Swfit from Andy Hertzfeld, a famed and uber-talented software engineer who was an integral part of the original Mac development team in the 80s. Years later, Hertzfeld would eventually wind up at Google where he helped develop Google Plus.

Today developers say the language [Objective C] is showing its age. "Apple had decades-old cruft in the face of anyone who wanted to write for any of their platforms," says Andy Hertzfeld, a software veteran who wrote much of the original Mac operating system and recently retired from Google. "I got pretty excited about Swift when I saw the announcement, because I've always despised Objective C. I like the principles behind it, but I hate the syntax, and have never been able to really enjoy programming in it."

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"Beautifully done," says Hertzfeld. "It relieves enormous pain points right in everyone's face. So the only iOS developers who are not going to get on top of Swift are the dumb ones." Since Swift is built to co-exist with Objective C code within the same project, toe-wetting is easy, even for developer sticks-in-the-mud.

That notwithstanding, Hertzfeld is holding off on jumping head first into Swift for the time being as it effectively means you're exclusively working behind Apple's simultaneously adored and hated "walled garden."

Again, the article is well worth a read as it provides a number of interesting insights and observations regarding the reasoning, struggles, and repercussions that invariably accompany an endeavor as massive as developing a new programming language.