Swift is a purely positive addition to the iOS tool kit according to most developers who were pleasantly surprised yesterday when Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) revealed a new toolbox for developers of apps for the iOS platform. It purports to be C without all of the ()!:;!!:” and is designed to get developers to stop focusing on creating cross-platform work and bring them into the iOS fold.
Flappy Bird clone developer speaks
The simplicity of Swift may be overstated but Nate Murray, a developer with just hours of Swift programming, created a clone of the popular “Flappy Bird” game using this new language.
While it was originally reported that it took him a mere four hours to create the game but Murray is saying that it was closer to a nine-hour process including breaks. Murray once worked as an engineer at internet services automation startup IFTTT, but now plies his trade as a co-founder of a coding education site entitled Fullstack.io.
Murray doesn’t have any designs on placing his clone on the iTunes App Store but he said that his choice to clone the game was based on the fact that it’s a “rite of passage for trying out any new game framework.” He then explained that “Flappy Bird has this great balance of being relatively simple to implement but fun to play when you’re done.”
Home run for Apple?
If Murray’s work is any indication, Swift is a home run and shows what can be done with a bit of experience with its predecessor Objective-C. Murray was especially impressed with “Playgrounds” which shows what changes in the code do to the app in real-time.
“One feature I’m particularly excited about is Playgrounds,” says Murray. “I’ve been looking for a tool to teach programming for a long time. Earlier this year my co-founder and I released Choc, a browser tool a lot like playgrounds. Playgrounds seems like it could be the teaching tool I’ve been looking for.”
Whether it took four hours that was originally reported or the nine that Murray said it took including dinner and tucking his kids into bed, score one for Murray and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).
