Can I get a good job as an iOS developer after learning just Swift
Hello,
I was wondering what people's thoughts were around employability of knowing Swift (but not Objective-C)?
Some context: I had studied CS Eng. in undergrad (and graduated at the top of my class) from a top program that focused on C++. I and know C++ forward & backward, but I dipped into the business side of things immediately after undergrad. Now, four years later, I'd like to get back into software development and my area of interest is iOS. I've been focused on learning Swift through a Stanford iTunes U course which is really good, but I'm not sure how it would be perceived if I don't know Objective-C.
I'm in the SF Bay Area and looking to stick around here in case that's relevant to the answer set.
Thank you!
14 comments
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However, no one will hire you unless you have at least one app in the app store. There's no specific requirement for what that app actually does. As far as I can tell, there's not even a specific requirement that the app be any good.
This has to do with that, at one time, it was quite difficult to get Apple to accept new apps. Now Apple accepts nearly all comers, yet hiring managers still have the idea that applicants are only qualified if they have a shipping app.
What that means is that your knowledge of C++ and Swift and your CSE degree won't help much; what you need is an app in the app store.
I guess this encourages publishing random garbage apps and polluting the app store. You can be a great engineer but not a businessman. Not everybody comes up with a polished product ready for publishing.
Btw, all your links (including internal) redirect to: http://www.warplife.com/ethics/reputation.html
I've been contemplating doing that for years.
What led me to choose last night to set up the redirect, was a reply to my complaint that having grey hair, as well as being openly public about my mental illness, has made it impossible to find paying work.
Some joker replied that if I wanted to find paying work, I wouldn't link to my essays about my schizoaffective disorder.
I regard his suggestion as the problem, not the solution.
I won't leave that redirect there forever. Eventually I'll stop being so pissed off.
Currently, I'm working with a team of iOS engineers to build out our SDK for our service. One of the issues we've come up with over the past year was Swift vs. Objective-C. We made the decision to continue development and refactoring in Swift while maintaining our well written Objective-C code base. So, anyone coming on to our team would need Swift experience and be able to understand some details in Objective-C.
If you have any questions about what I mentioned, you can email me: aqadan@gmail.com
Many frameworks are written in Objective-C and have not been ported over.
I think you'll find it very frustrating if you only know Swift because there's just so much Objective-C out there and they're by no mean deprecated.
You should learn the basics of Objective-C at the very least.
Edit:One thing I forgot to mention, knowing just Swift means you have next to no experience with iOS comparatively speaking since Swift hasn't been around that long. There are companies that expect us to know pre-ARC Objective-C just to let you know where the bars are in this game.
Once you know Swift well, and have written at least one app, you'll probably know a bit of Objective-C anyways. As other commenters have mentioned, there are lots of libraries that haven't been ported yet, lots of example code on Stack Overflow, etc. The Swift community is still evolving, so you're going to encounter some Obj-C as you work more in iOS-land. From there, learning Obj-C is pretty much limited to the language itself, which is not a huge hurdle (I picked up the rest of what I needed to be productive in a matter of days).
TL;DR Learning Swift makes it easier to learn iOS - once you know Swift + iOS, it's easy to pick up Objective-C.
How about taking an afternoon (or however long it takes you) to learn Objective-C. After all,it is just another C variant and closely related to C and C++, which you already know.
Whether you are employable as a developer depends on your programming skills which are separate and distinct from the particular language(s) you "know".
I'm sure I can teach myself objective-c quickly, but if I were to code an app I'd probably prefer to do this in Swift.