Hey Lars, I have been looking into this language for the last few days. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but I have read the technical reference on it (available as a free ebook from Apple, complete with the BNF grammar in the back).
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi 'steppers, > > I am sure the one or another of us has heard about that new language for > Cocoa/Cocoa Touch that Apple has recently introduced: > > > https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/AboutTheLanguageReference.html > > What is our position towards this? Is there already an official GNUstep > position? There isn't really one as of yet as the community has only had days to form an opinion of the language. > If not, what are your opinions? I believe that it is very javascript like in order to attract those who dislike pointers and the "weird" syntax of Objective-C. It is a concession to those who are more used to scripting languages than C or C++. I'm of the opinion that they are doing this to curtail cross platform development (such as Apportable and others have achieved on Android as well as other platforms). I believe that if Swift isn't released as open source then it is an attempt at lock-in on Apple's platform and, as such, represents an assault on user and developer freedoms. Microsoft had C# now Apple has Swift. If there is someone that would like to take up the mantle of implementing an open swift compiler, I think it would be an interesting endeavor (whether it's part of GNUstep or not). Swift utilizes the Objective-C runtime so it's not worlds apart and would be able to leverage existing ObjC code. > Does anybody know about the legal status of this language, e.g. whether > we're allowed to support it or not? > We are always *allowed* to support whatever we wish. There is nothing restricting us from using any free implementation which becomes available. As far as Apple releasing a free version, I'm not holding my breath on that one. Happy stepping, > > Lars > _______________________________________________ > Discuss-gnustep mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep > Later, -- Gregory Casamento Open Logic Corporation, Principal Consultant yahoo/skype: greg_casamento, aol: gjcasa (240)274-9630 (Cell) http://www.gnustep.org http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
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