If you were a Mac developer at that time, your entire skillset was effectively made obsolete. Compared to this last week’s change, OS 9 to OS X was a catastrophic jump – a new language AND a new SDK. It also wasn’t that long ago that Apple made the jump from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.

You could argue that Swift and Objective-C are in a very similar situation as Objective-C and Java once were. The writing was on the wall most of that time. Java lasted about 6 years for Cocoa applications. Then, unceremoniously, Java was dropped as a supported language for Cocoa applications. Slowly, but surely, new features became available in Objective-C that weren’t available in Java. It wasn’t that long ago that Mac OS X Cocoa applications could be written in either Objective-C or Java. If you’re maintaining an Objective-C application, yes, you are still okay.īased on previous behavior, an iOS and Mac OS X developer will use Objective-C less and less as time goes on. If you’re currently developing an application in Objective-C, you’ll also be OK.

As of today, you could start writing an application in Objective-C (instead of Swift), and you’ll be OK. In all likelihood, Objective-C will be a primary language for writing iOS and Mac OS X apps for awhile.

So, you might be wondering, how does this new language impact you as a developer? How will it impact your business? Do you have to rewrite your existing iOS applications? What about starting a new application? Are you in the middle of writing an Objective-C iOS application and wonder if you need to switch to Swift?

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