raywenderlich.com Abandoning Swift

As soon as Swift was first announced, our team was quick to jump onto the Swift bandwagon.

At first it was great. The community was hyped, it was tons of fun to learn new stuff, and we started converting all of our written tutorials, video tutorials, and books.

But then the trouble began.

While we were converting our tutorials to Swift, every other week something would change in the language, forcing fresh rewrites.

“No worries”, we thought, “this is only because the language is in beta!”

However:

• Last spring with the advent of Swift 1.2, they took away my beloved if let pyramids. “Allright”, I thought, “I’ve lost a friend, but I can carry on. Cue the rewrites!”
• Last fall at WWDC with the advent of Swift 2.0, they took away my beloved println statement. “print doesn’t have as much style”, I complained, “but I guess it will do. Rewrite the rewrites!”
• This spring with the advent of Swift 2.2, they deprecated my beloved ++ operator. “Now they’ve gone too far”, I growled, “We’re outta here!”

So today, I have some big news. Here on out, raywenderlich.com is officially abandoning Swift as a language – and we are never ever, ever getting back together!

Blame It All On My Roots

We’re going back to our roots – here on out, all tutorials will be in Objective-C!

Let’s face it people, Swift has problems – and it’s more than just the frequent rate of change. Let’s take a look:

• Swift wastes time. Objective-C was great because when you need to code, you just write classes and methods and boom – you’re done.

  With Swift, you sit around thinking “Hm, I wonder if I should choose class, struct or enum?” Or “I wonder, should this be a method, or a computed property?” With all that time wasted sitting around debating, I could’ve finished coding the whole app!

• Optionals suck. Optionals – who asked for them? I can’t remember a time my Objective-C code crashed due to messaging a nil reference – optionals simply solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

  Also, my editor said I include too many exclamation points in my writing already, so the last thing I want is them cluttering up my code too!

• Nobody uses Swift anyway. Let’s face it, Swift is only used by hipsters. There’s stats to prove it – Swift developers have the most facial hair!

  Clean-shaven developers working with enterprise companies know: Objective-C is where it’s at.

Swift, I knew you were trouble when you walked in – so shame on me now.

Addressing the Hipsters

I know the Swift hipsters out there might say – “But Ray – what about Swift’s additional code safety?!”

To that I say: “It’s boring playing it safe. True coders like to live on the wild side.”

But then they may exclaim – “But Ray – what about playgrounds?!”

To that I say: “Playgrounds are for kiddies. True coders just open up Xcode and start hacking.”

And then there’s the big one – “But Ray – what about Swift being open source?!”

To that I say: “True coders know that’s just Apple trying to scam people into working for them for free.”

And don’t just take my fancy arguments for it. Willi Shi, eminent developer and philosopher, argues about the disadvantages of Swift far more eloquently than I. That should silence all those pesky Swift hipsters!

Your Wish is Our Demand

At the end of the day though, it doesn’t matter what I think – it matters what you think.

But luckily, in this instance we are in agreement! Every day I get tweets like these, asking why we’ve abandoned our roots:

Don’t worry folks, we’ve listened to you and heard your call – Objective-C is on the way!

A New Day, a New Team

This does lead to a bit of a problem. Currently, our entire tutorial team is composed of hipster Swift developers, who avoid Objective-C like the plague.

Luckily, I know just what to do, thanks to a well respected businessman and politician.

It was fun knowing ya!

Open Call for Objective-C Authors and Tech Editors

Obviously, this means we have some rare openings on the tutorial team! In other words, we’ve got a blank space, and we’ll write your name.

If you’d like to write or tech edit some kick-ass Objective-C tutorials, please reply to this post on the forums with the answers to the following questions:

• What’s your experience with Objective-C?
• What part of Swift sucks the most? (It’s OK if you can’t narrow it down to just one)
• Do you agree facial hair should be limited to eyebrows?

This is a new beginning for raywenderlich.com and this is your chance to get in on the ground floor – you’d be simply foolish not to apply.

Thanks everyone, and I wish you a happy and amusing day! :]

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