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Wow, this is an interesting/refreshing development from Apple. I can't recall them ever having a public blog to communicate with their developer community. Unti

Wow, this is an interesting/refreshing development from Apple. I can't recall them ever having a public blog to communicate with their developer community. Until now, it's mostly been through their developer forums, private support, and in-person at the yearly WWDC. How they've developed as a developer-facing company this year is really encouraging. Google et al have always been transparent as glass relative to Apple's iOS work, but this blog, the twitter dialog from Swift's development team, and the no-NDA release of iOS8 has really changed my opinion of the direction they're pushing the ecosystem.

hugi 12y ago
Surfin' Safari (https://www.webkit.org/blog/ https://www.webkit.org/blog/) is another great Apple developer blog. I followed it religiously back when Webkit was leaving everyone else in the dust.
- frik 12y ago
  Also, the Webkit Community Blog: http://planet.webkit.org http://planet.webkit.org e.g. Adobe is contributing a lot of technology like CSS Regions And Brent Fulgham maintain a Windows build of Webkit: http://whtconstruct.blogspot.com http://whtconstruct.blogspot.com
darthgoogle 12y ago
Well, let's just wait and see, because frankly, I'm tired of reading marketing fluff like "We can’t wait to see what you build!". After years in the making (which means plenty of time to think of an answer), one of the most important questions still hasn't been answered, and not even mentioned on the blog. Namely, will Swift be open-source and submitted to standards bodies? Will key libraries also be released? If I make an investment to learn Swift, what are the chances that I can take this knowledge and use it outside of the Apple ecosystem? Or is Swift destined to follow the fate of Objective-C and be completely useless outside of Mac/iOS apps?
- kennywinker 12y ago
  I'm choosing to take this as gospel: https://twitter.com/mxweas/status/474581160454942721 https://twitter.com/mxweas/status/474581160454942721 > Max Weisel: Swift will be open source with the release of iOS 8 :))) https://twitter.com/mxweas/status/474589964823306240 https://twitter.com/mxweas/status/474589964823306240 > Max Weisel: Asked at the labs
- austinz 12y ago
  Their lack of transparency on this matter sucks, but at least they haven't committed to making it proprietary: http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2014-June/073698.html http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2014-June/073698....
  - darthgoogle 12y ago
    Interesting thread. Not buying Chris's (with his Apple hat on) answer though. The idea that you spend a few years to create a new language and have not even had a discussion yet about whether or not it will be open source is simply not credible. Unless Swift was rushed to release because companies like Apportable were making too much progress and they wanted to herd developers back into the pens with new proprietary languages and APIs e.g. Metal.
    - mitchty 12y ago
      Maybe they just don't want to deal with open sourced stuff for 1.0 Reference the arm64 stuff, I bet that the situation is that swift is in heavy flux (which if you follow Chris Lattner on the apple forums you realize they're changing things like crazy right now) and they just don't want to deal with people contributing to something that isn't quite ready. They already committed to saying they will introduce breaking changes in future releases. Maybe the whole team just doesn't have the time to deal with it, who knows, lets wait. Its not like C# suffered by not being open source from the start. I wouldn't put that past Apple. Remember the more we antagonize them the more likely their legal team might go "not worth the effort just keep it in house".
    - 12y ago

hugi 12y ago

Surfin' Safari (https://www.webkit.org/blog/ https://www.webkit.org/blog/) is another great Apple developer blog. I followed it religiously back when Webkit was leaving everyone else in the dust.

frik 12y ago
Also, the Webkit Community Blog: http://planet.webkit.org http://planet.webkit.org e.g. Adobe is contributing a lot of technology like CSS Regions And Brent Fulgham maintain a Windows build of Webkit: http://whtconstruct.blogspot.com http://whtconstruct.blogspot.com

darthgoogle 12y ago

Well, let's just wait and see, because frankly, I'm tired of reading marketing fluff like "We can’t wait to see what you build!". After years in the making (which means plenty of time to think of an answer), one of the most important questions still hasn't been answered, and not even mentioned on the blog. Namely, will Swift be open-source and submitted to standards bodies? Will key libraries also be released? If I make an investment to learn Swift, what are the chances that I can take this knowledge and use it outside of the Apple ecosystem? Or is Swift destined to follow the fate of Objective-C and be completely useless outside of Mac/iOS apps?

kennywinker 12y ago
I'm choosing to take this as gospel: https://twitter.com/mxweas/status/474581160454942721 https://twitter.com/mxweas/status/474581160454942721 > Max Weisel: Swift will be open source with the release of iOS 8 :))) https://twitter.com/mxweas/status/474589964823306240 https://twitter.com/mxweas/status/474589964823306240 > Max Weisel: Asked at the labs
austinz 12y ago
Their lack of transparency on this matter sucks, but at least they haven't committed to making it proprietary: http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2014-June/073698.html http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2014-June/073698....
- darthgoogle 12y ago
  Interesting thread. Not buying Chris's (with his Apple hat on) answer though. The idea that you spend a few years to create a new language and have not even had a discussion yet about whether or not it will be open source is simply not credible. Unless Swift was rushed to release because companies like Apportable were making too much progress and they wanted to herd developers back into the pens with new proprietary languages and APIs e.g. Metal.
  - mitchty 12y ago
    Maybe they just don't want to deal with open sourced stuff for 1.0 Reference the arm64 stuff, I bet that the situation is that swift is in heavy flux (which if you follow Chris Lattner on the apple forums you realize they're changing things like crazy right now) and they just don't want to deal with people contributing to something that isn't quite ready. They already committed to saying they will introduce breaking changes in future releases. Maybe the whole team just doesn't have the time to deal with it, who knows, lets wait. Its not like C# suffered by not being open source from the start. I wouldn't put that past Apple. Remember the more we antagonize them the more likely their legal team might go "not worth the effort just keep it in house".
  - 12y ago