Hello all. Just finished up watching the WWDC keynote, and had a few questions.
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Have any of you installed the iOS 8 beta yet, and if so, does Codea work fine?
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What are your opinions of their new Swift programming language?
Will the introduction of Swift affect Codea capabilities or efficiency in any way?
@JakAttak I think they stole AirCode! Playgrounds, that’s what they’re calling it! All joking aside the Swift programming language looks like the perfect language for me and many others, I find all the C stuff a bit backward in this era. It’s making everything much easier for developers in general although some people may not like it. I want to know if Codea works before I update my iPad.
When was it gmt and how did you’s watch it. I was interested in new stuff thier bringing out
@kirorp, it’s available to stream
@Luatee, I agree, Swift looks really promising. Still, if I switch languages, it will probably be to something cross-platform.
I took the plunge and installed iOS 8, Codea runs fine from what I’ve seen so far.
swift does look cool, it is rather “functional -icky”, it has type inference and closures and function types and generics … unfortunately you cannot really develop directly on the ipad
I haven’t tried iOS 8 yet, but there look to be so many new and interesting APIs to take advantage of. I’d like to look at getting iCloud Drive working with Codea.
Swift looks really interesting. I think development in the language will still come down to whatever API you choose to use (SpriteKit, Cocos2D, and so on). The language is pretty accessible, but the provided APIs are what you actually work with.
Speaking of all those APIs, @Simeon, any thoughts on how some of them might end up in Codea? In particular, it would be interesting to see how HomeKit, TouchID, extension points, and Metal might play in.
@Luatee - Not quite sure how they stole AirCode. The Playground takes advantage of the visual inspector and the simulation to create previews of the code. While it can be used with SpriteKit, it’s not strictly what it was made for.
I’m on iOS 8 and Yosemite. I got on the beta as fast as I could when it came out. Anyways, they seem moderately bugless. Code runs fine on it.
About Swift… I will no doubt use it for my games. It’s great, because it still gives you the power of Objective C in a scripting language. In my opinion, it’s amazing.
However, for me, the one of the highlights was the new Scene Kit with 3D physics. So you’ll be seeing a new StackIt 3D after my current project.
Thanks!
@Mark I’ve been looking at Metal, but it seems like it has its own shading language based on C++ (and one that is quite a bit more exotic than GLSL). If we were to integrate it then I suspect shaders would all have to be re-written. I’m still looking into it, though.
Extension points are pretty interesting, and I think there’s some potential there for integration into Codea.
@Zoyt I was joking, I have been using playground and it’s nothing like AirCode, the idea explained at WWDC sounds a bit like AirCode. How do you like Yosemite? I think the iOS 7 take is welcome IMO, it looks much better, but I have noticed since 10.8 - 10.9 - 10.10 my ram usage in general has gone up by about 1.5GBs each OS upgrade, I used to have some much free ram! But this I think is because of new compression algorithms for memory swaps, partly. Metal I think is a bit over exaggerated but it is very good in its own right.
@Luatee - I love Yosemite. I haven’t noticed any speed differences. About the UI, it’s kind of interesting how it doesn’t follow a lot of common iOS 7/8 design practices, but it’s for the better (I’m talking about how in iOS 7 you’re supposed to avoid button borders and other things).
Anyways, the new iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite APIs are amazing. I’ve been watching all the WWDC videos (which is a bit tiring), but it’s very interesting. Sadly, most of the APIs don’t apply to Codea, though. They require special setup in Xcode.
@Simeon - Do you plan on integrating the new iCloud Drive with Codea, instead of DropBox? In my opinion, you should do it, especially since other apps can extend it to include their own storage methods (like Box.net and DropBox and whatever).
@Zoyt The icons themselves do not represent iOS much, as they are more OS X 7-8 icon styles mixed with iOS, so they’ve come out with something unique. I am really interested in the APIs swift covers (swift cover, don’t know if you’ve heard of that ;)) ) I plan to eventually move from Codea to Swift, but still use Codea for rapid prototyping as it is generally meant to be used.
@Luatee - No idea what Swift Covers are. Haha. But I encourage you to try out the documentation playground in Xcode.
Its an advert for insurance (life insurance I think over here in Britain) called swift cover. Documentation playground? I haven’t seen this I’ve just been using playground with ibooks open showing Apples Swift programming language book, sounds a lot more efficient than what I’m doing. Also @Zoyt I am having an issue with playground where it does not connect to the simulator, so I only have the output box connected to playground that shows you variable values.
@Luatee - To actually create an app with Swift, you need to create a project. For documentation playgrounds, go to the documentation (that is the equivalent to the iBook on it), press the share button, and press “Open Playground”. That downloads and opens a file that is the documentation with all the Swift code editable so you can play around with it. It’s a great way to learn and toy with Swift.
Let me know if you have any questions on Swift or iOS development in general.
How do u get Swift on a non-iMac? [-(