iOS Is iOS development all in Swift now

[ZillaG]

After years of being away from it, I want to get back into iOS development. I'm from the Objective-C world. Is everything with Swift now, or can I still develop in Objective-C? I don't mind learning Swift, so should I go ahead and do it?

 

[firewood]

Currently, Xcode and Cocoa Touch fully support app development in both Swift and Objective C (either or both). So you can use either for iOS apps for which you can find decent API documentation. However, a lot of Apple's new documentation is Swift only.

Except for the evil stuff that Swift requires to get access to C pointers and memory, it's pretty easy for an experienced Objective C programmer to learn Swift 3 or 4. A few weeks of study to fall on all the gotchas, and a couple learning apps in Swift should do it.

So my earlier apps in Objective C, I'm keeping them in Objective C, even when doing significant updates. However any new apps that use completely new APIs, such as ARKit, etc., I'm writing in Swift.

 

[ZillaG]

Ok make sense. I started an app in ObjC so I'll finish it in that. Thanks.

 

[bjet767]

I use exclusively OC, but the frustration is all the example are now being given in Swift. I've been getting good at converting them to OC when I need to.

If it doesn't matter to you moving to Swift would be a good thing.

 

[AxoNeuron]

Most of the job market these days is for Swift, that's for sure. The only time I see Objective-C these days is when you are working with legacy code.

 

[Erendiox]

My experience working in the field is that there's still a ton of legacy code written in Objective C and companies aren't exactly chomping at the bit to convert their entire codebase over to a new language. Swift also has a bit more growing to do before many would consider it to be fully matured. Because of that, being able to read and write Objective-C code is still a valued skillset.

That being said, Swift is the future. The new code I'm writing is almost entirely in Swift. Knowledge around interoperability of the two languages, handling mixed projects, is central to being marketable as an iOS developer right now.