Coders: Episode 4–Decoding Swift for OS X

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/199080855″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
On this episode of Coders, thought leaders in the software development space discuss Swift, Apple’s programming language designed for use on the latest operating system, OS X.
RCR Wireless News Editorial Director Jeff Mucci is joined by Victor Agreda Jr., of Superpixel Studios, Twitch.tv’s Angry Dad Gamer and former editor-in-chief of The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
Dave Vioreanu, co-founder and development lead at Derby, also joins in on the lively conversation.
“What is Swift?,” Vioreanu pondered. “It’s essentially going to be the replacement for Objective C. It’s meant to be nice and concise and more readable and easier to use than Objective C, all things that I find to be true. I really enjoy using Swift. It’s what’s going to be powering the Apple platforms going forward.”
The object-oriented language is meant to be easy and expressive, while building on Objective C.
“That’s sort of what’s interesting to me,” Agreda said. “They made it easier but they have to maintain the same power. This is always the thing that people talk about in software development. you can have something really powerful but to make it easy to use, it’s this struggle.”
The group also talks about Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.
Vioreanu said Cocoa and Cocoa Touch integrate Swift code with the visual interfaces that display information.
“It’s still just a programming language,” he said. “We’re still dealing with the APIs. It’s the knowledge of those APIs, how you use them, how you implement them, that’s really the backbone of an Apple developer.”
Swift is also a compiler language that can be used to essentially implement any programming language; it can be used for software development projects beyond mobile applications.
Agreda gave the example of two similar apps with one displaying animated visuals.
“That’s someone who’s not familiar with those APIs and they’re not using the power Apple is giving them. That build in power is really what Cocoa is.”
Check out the RCRtv page for additional episodes of Coders.
Agreda will be hosting an April 13 live cast of his popular Angry Dad Gamer series from the RCRatx Studio Lounge on the up and coming East side of tech hub Austin, Texas, home of RCR Wireless News.