In June, Cupertino-based Apple Inc. revealed plans to open source its new programming language, Swift. The company made good on that promise this week, by officially declaring the language open under the Apache License.
The developer community welcomes the move, as it allows them to contribute improvements and optimizations. With the language now in the hands of coders everywhere, there is far less reliance on the mother-ship for updates, patches, and permissions
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Soon, the most precious resource of any business will not be physical, but informational. Today, only 1% of developers are focused on implementing cognitive systems to provide assistance in dealing with data. By 2018, that number will rise to 50%. In a few more years, every organization will essentially be a software company, IDC predicts.
This forecast from the fine gents at International Data Corporation (IDC) comes with the addendum that business is becoming more and more about arming yourself to the teeth with technical prowess, or else. Here are the most important predictions from IDC’s November 4 market intelligence briefing
It’s becoming increasingly important to master a computer, not just the basic stuff, but also the underpinnings: making apps, building a site, or leveraging the cloud in business. Today, software engineering is one of the highest-paid jobs worldwide, and there are plenty of slices to be had from that financial pie still.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel knows this. He is rooting for computer science and coding classes in school. Not optionally, but mandatory. Specifically, he wants programming to be a graduation prerequisite
It’s no mystery that despite having less reach than Android, iOS is preferred by developers who put bread on the table by coding apps. The reason? Well, there are many reasons for that, but there is one crucial aspect where Android fares much worse than iOS: fragmentation.
Device fragmentation is both good and bad, depending on how you look at it. If you’re Google, fragmentation is good because it means you get to put your OS on a plethora of devices big and small, cheap or pricey, and in countries where Apple has yet to sell its expensive iPhone and iPad. But if you’re a developer or a regular user, fragmentation is not so good.
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Ever scratch your eyes for not learning how to code as a kid? I do every day. Not only is programming one of the best paid jobs (by far), it’s also a great way to turn brilliant ideas into working applications for everyone to use. By all accounts, you can use it to change the world profoundly.
As if programming itself wasn’t hard enough, there are dozens of different coding languages each with their own particularities that can be used to make a program. Depending on the platform you’re targeting, you’ll have a flurry of tongues to choose from.
Swift – the new kid on the block introduced by Apple at its annual developer gathering in 2014 – lifts a lot of the hurdles generally associated with app programming, and now an app called Swifty promises to simply the process even more for noobs like you and me.