As you may have seen, Apple has open sourced Swift.
(swift.org)
I would love to see a “Codea version of Swift”. I do not think trying to port over story boards would be very user friendly, but just having the ability to use UIKit and SpriteKit in code would be wonderful.
Now that it is open sourced, you know someone is going to try and make a Swift IDE for the iPad and I would love to have a nice, mature and stable one like Codea.
Thoughts?
Personally, I wouldn’t want to replace Lua with Swift. I really like Lua and how everything has been integrated.
I agree, I don’t wnt to have to learn another language in the middle of learning Lua.
Swift isn’t really a language that was designed to be embedded into other applications, so an IDE for it on iPad would be tricky, although not impossible. Personally, i would echo @Ignatz in saying that i’d rather prefer Lua. For the type of application that Codea is, Lua is a much better fit than Swift.
I love Swift for application design. But I love Lua for hacking around with games and graphics.
There are some limitations regarding Swift, however. Even though the compiler is open source, you cannot implement a compiler on iOS. That is, while you would be able to compile code, you wouldn’t be able to run it because you cannot execute arbitrary pages of data. It’s the same reason you can’t implement a JIT compiler on iOS. There is interpreted Swift, but I imagine that would be an order of magnitude slower than Lua.
I do want to expose UIKit to Codea, but I want to do it in a way that is consistent with the Codea API and not simply expose the entire thing. A UIKit for Codea would be more along the lines of React instead of MVC.
Swift would be a lot easier if they made a “Swift for dummies”. It would be great if they added swift, although I don’t want to pay more money.
@ignatz: I’m sorry for creating a duplicate post. I didn’t know there’s already a discussion like this. I should have searched before posting a new discussion. My mistake.
Anyway… asking for Swift version of Codea doesn’t mean we should throw away the original Codea. If you love Lua so much, then use the original Codea, and ignore the Swift version altogether. As simple as that.
Everybody is now wanting to learn Swift, especially since Apple open source it. There are many new websites that offering Swift learning. There are even some online Swift IDEs. But, AFAIK there’s no Swift IDE for iOS.
Swift is now getting a momentum, some say a quite big momentum. So, I think it could become a business opportunity for TwoLivesLeft to create a Codea-like app for Swift, as a whole new and different product.
Did you read what Simeon said?
“Even though the compiler is open source, you cannot implement a compiler on iOS. That is, while you would be able to compile code, you wouldn’t be able to run it because you cannot execute arbitrary pages of data.”
Yes, Apple can open source until they’re blue in the face, but iOS is still a walled garden.
@Ignatz: Yes, I did. Did you? Because if you continue, Simeon also said:
“There is interpreted Swift, but I imagine that would be an order of magnitude slower than Lua.”
Which mean it’s doable despite the speed issue. For education purpose, I think a good enough performance would be acceptable for most cases. Take a look at Python, it’s slow as snail, yet it’s being used everywhere because its ease of use.
It’s a good opportunity for TLL with a promising market, young students. If TLL don’t think it worth the risk, well… I think somebody else will do it. It’s just a matter of time.
@bee it is definitely doable. And I think it could be a fun project. I appreciate the suggestion. I think if I were to build something Swift related, it would be less about putting graphics on the screen and more about just reviewing and running code.
Thought just to note: we don’t build products because of the business opportunity, or the target market, or anything like that.
We build products for ourselves, and if other people happen to like them then that is great.
@simeon: Well, alright then. It’s a suggestion worth to try. 