On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 16:29 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller <
hns@goldelico.com> wrote:
Am 08.06.2015 um 21:13 schrieb Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf <lars.sonchocky.helldorf@gmail.com>:
> In case you don't know already …
>
> http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/08/apple-to-open-source-swift-later-this-year-with-support-for-ios-os-x-and-linux
>
Interesting move,
But I doubt that Gregory’s efforts for Phoenix were the driving factor as someone
wrote on Twitter…
I believe you're referring to Aral's posting... he didn't say it was the driving factor only that Phoenix had done it's job. And that it did... it got a message across and it helped to spread awareness.
In reality, to me, Phoenix was mainly a "Hail Mary" (an American _expression_ for a last ditch effort) maneuver just in case they didn't open source it. I believe this move was inevitable. Whatever Apple's real motivation, I'm thankful they did it. It's useless to guess why.
Anyways, I still prefer Objective-C 1.0 for its expressive power and readability (Obj-C 2.0 is
IMHO a little less readable for me and SWIFT even more).
I don't mind ObjC2.0. I admit I don't like "optionals" in Swift at all. Far too much effort to avoid nil when simply checking for nil or returning nothing when nil is encountered is good enough.
But, the language itself is becoming less and less important since the frameworks (${somethingKit)
are the key to an OS. And OS X / iOS is getting more and more every year.
Very true.
Well, I know what I am talking about. Not yet in the public until now. I have rewritten some of
the important frameworks of QuantumSTEP in PHP.
PHP????
Are you kidding???
No. As said, the language isn’t that important. The architecture of the ${something}Kit is.
Very cool! :)
And I am using it to make my Web Pages now. Writing .app bundles using the same high level
abstraction of NSView, NSUserDefaults, NSBundle, NSFileManager, etc. Using the same logic as a
desktop .app. No need to fiddle around with <div> and <span> etc. Just once to get the AppKit.php
working. And theming is done by some CSS.
The NSGraphicsContext has become a NSHTMLGraphicsContext and it generates HTML to control
the remote display server (commonly known as “Browser”). Instead of Display Postscript or
Cairo or X11-Protocol.
Yes, there are some tricks (and limitations) to squeeze HTTP&HTML into the Foundation/AppKit
metaphor but it works astonishingly well and the key benefit is to keep the code for .app bundles
small.
Some code can be found here:
http://git.goldelico.com/?p=mySTEP.git;a=blob;f=AppKit/Sources/AppKit.php;hb=HEAD
So back to the topic: SWIFT will attract more developers to the MacOS / iOS ecosystem. But detract
some from GNUstep (unless GNUstep gets SWIFT bindings). Since people like to express themselves
in their favorite language. And use common building blocks. Like LEGO is worldwide but the user manual
is translated into many mother languages…
I believe that GNUstep bindings to Swift are very important. Naturally I, and any other interested persons, should start looking into how to do this sooner rather than later so we will be ready by the time it's released officially.
BR,
Nikolaus