Does anyone here program in Swift?

[dave4shmups]

I've thought about learning Swift, since I now have a MacBook, but app development doesn't interest me.  And isn't that pretty much all that Swift is used for?  

[aeroencychris]

Haven't used it personally but yeah, macOS and iOS development only.

[madknight3]

If you don't want to do any development for Apple products, then you're better off learning another language. From my understanding, Swift can be used for other platforms, but currently, the options are very limited.

 

If you're not interested in app development, what are you interested in?

[dave4shmups]

Trying out different coding languages, and seeing which one, if any, that I would like to continue learning.  That's what I'm interested in.

[madknight3]

34 minutes ago, dave4shmups said:

Trying out different coding languages, and seeing which one, if any, that I would like to continue learning.  That's what I'm interested in.

It's certainly fun to play around with different languages. It's been a while since I've had the time to do that. If I was doing what you're doing, then Rust would be the first language I'd be learning. After that, I'm not sure.

 

Some options I'd consider are

• Kotlin, Scala, and Clojure (for a JVM alternative to Java, if that ecosystem looks appealing and you even want an alternative)
• C# and F# (if the .NET ecosystem looks appealing)
• Typescript, Elm, and Clojurescript (for a JavaScript alternative, if doing web development and you even want an alternative)
• C++
• Python
• Haskell
• Elixir
• Common Lisp (or some other Lisp)
• Smalltalk
• Go
• Julia
• R
• Swift

 

You might find the 2017 Stack Overflow Developer Survey useful for seeing what people like/dislike using. The TIOBE index is another site for checking out what's popular which may give you some ideas.

[dave4shmups]

On 5/1/2017 at 5:34 PM, madknight3 said:

It's certainly fun to play around with different languages. It's been a while since I've had the time to do that. If I was doing what you're doing, then Rust would be the first language I'd be learning. After that, I'm not sure.

 

Some options I'd consider are

• Kotlin, Scala, and Clojure (for a JVM alternative to Java, if that ecosystem looks appealing and you even want an alternative)
• C# and F# (if the .NET ecosystem looks appealing)
• Typescript, Elm, and Clojurescript (for a JavaScript alternative, if doing web development and you even want an alternative)
• C++
• Python
• Haskell
• Elixir
• Common Lisp (or some other Lisp)
• Smalltalk
• Go
• Julia
• R
• Swift

 

You might find the 2017 Stack Overflow Developer Survey useful for seeing what people like/dislike using. The TIOBE index is another site for checking out what's popular which may give you some ideas.

OK, thanks for the advice!

[CookieMaster]

On 5/1/2017 at 5:23 PM, dave4shmups said:

Trying out different coding languages, and seeing which one, if any, that I would like to continue learning.  That's what I'm interested in.

Do you know any current languages?

[dave4shmups]

On 5/4/2017 at 1:11 AM, CookieMaster said:

Do you know any current languages?

No, and I wish I had gotten into Basic, back in the 1980s.  According to Wikipedia, Microsoft Visual Basic is the successor to it.  They also have Small Basic for kids and beginners, but it's not compatible with Mac OS Sierra.

[Pinguinsan]

If you're not looking towards app development, and you wanted something easy-ish like basic to learn, I would whole-heartedly recommend Python. It is sort of the defacto standard "learn programming basics" language, and it is useful for all sorts of things. You really don't need to dive into object oriented programming (Java, .NET, etc) if you just wanted to learn.

[jimistephen]

Swift is open source and can be used in linux for servers also, but other than that, yes it's pretty much iOS macOS apps. As a side note I love Swift.

[dave4shmups]

On 5/5/2017 at 6:01 PM, Pinguinsan said:

If you're not looking towards app development, and you wanted something easy-ish like basic to learn, I would whole-heartedly recommend Python. It is sort of the defacto standard "learn programming basics" language, and it is useful for all sorts of things. You really don't need to dive into object oriented programming (Java, .NET, etc) if you just wanted to learn.

Yeah, I've heard that Python is easy to get into and learn.  What about Microsoft Visual Basic?  AFIK, that's the current successor to the old 1980's Basic.

[madknight3]

11 hours ago, dave4shmups said:

Yeah, I've heard that Python is easy to get into and learn.  What about Microsoft Visual Basic?  AFIK, that's the current successor to the old 1980's Basic.

Visual Basic .NET is also reasonable easy to get into. It doesn't have the best reputation these days though so it's easy to find hate on it. Regardless, it's still got a loyal following despite its reputation. Personally, I don't mind the language that much. I use it quite frequently because it's one of the languages used at the company I work for, but it wouldn't be my first choice.

 

C# is the more popular language to use for the .NET framework. Its extra popularity comes with some perks like more tooling/resources and new features being implemented in C# before VB.NET, however, there's still plenty of stuff out there for VB.NET and you probably won't really notice too much of a difference as a beginner. I tend to recommend C# over VB.NET because of this, but ultimately it doesn't really matter what you choose and you may find VB.NET easier to learn. It's not like you're restricted to only learning one language in your life anyway.

 

I'm not sure what the current state of Visual Studio and .NET are on macOS. It was Windows only for a long time but has been (officially) expanding to other platforms more recently. If you have Windows, it's probably still better to use that but feel free to try using macOS if that's what you prefer. You can download the Visual Studio IDE (ie: the application you'll use to write and run your code) here.

 

 

[Pinguinsan]

On 5/27/2017 at 2:18 PM, dave4shmups said:

Yeah, I've heard that Python is easy to get into and learn.  What about Microsoft Visual Basic?  AFIK, that's the current successor to the old 1980's Basic.

Visual Basic 6.0 was the "simple, 1980's basic successor", and was absurdly popular in a lot of problem domains. It was pretty simple to learn. Unfortunately, the new Visual Basic (called Visual Basic .NET) is a full fledged object oriented language. It is essentially C# with different syntax (to pedants: yes, I know it's not that simple, but it's close enough). As such, it can be daunting to learn concepts, although the syntax is very simple.

[dave4shmups]

What about assembly/assembler code?  It certainly looks interesting.

[madknight3]

2 hours ago, dave4shmups said:

What about assembly/assembler code?  It certainly looks interesting.

There's nothing wrong with learning assembly, and it has its uses, but for most people who are getting into programming, it's a bad first language. It's complicated and it's a poor choice for most programming tasks that they want to do. Maybe it's a good fit for you though, who knows.