The Eternal Transition
Trying to recap how many transitions we (developers) went through in Apple land:
- from 32 to 64 bits
- from one resolution (and one form factor) to many
- from one pixel density to three. Back to 2 if you target iOS10+ on. Unless in September the announce something @4x.
- from Spring and Struts to Auto Layout. Fun fact: a small version of Spring and Struts is back into Xcode 8.
- a new design language in iOS7. Do you recall how many issues were caused by the new behavior of the status bar?
- bitcode. Not yet mandatory, but already creating friction.
- From Objc to Swift. Not yet enforced, but already demanding.
- From previous version of Swift to new version of Swift. No comment.
Are you in the software business trying to write once and make it last as long as you can?
I can’t help but think that every piece of Swift code that I write for iOS these days will decay pretty quickly.
What I feel is the most durable code in Apple land is some Objc code, written for the Mac.
I am happy if you disprove my thesis.
Update Jul 26 2016: I forgot to add supporting IPv6 networks.