What Will Happen To Corona With Apple's New Announcements (iOS 8, swift, etc.)

General (non-technical) Off-Topic
#21

Hey everyone. Yesterday Apple unveiled their new iOS (iOS 8) which came with many new features and APIs. They also unveiled their new programming language: Swift. How do you think these announcements to Corona SDK? New features? Easier integration?

Swift is certainly is game changer but still does not cover Android.  For me Corona still has me because of the ability to load the camera and add text over the top.  I was concerned about Android but issues with Widget Candy controls in iOS 7 made my mind up for me.

Strangely enough iOS 8 beta has resurrected my app with text box issues so iOS 8 is not all bad.

Xcode’s UI is still a nightmare to navigate but there is a lot more control as to the design process compared to coronas “code, run, check, code run check” for designing apps. I’m also falling in love with XCode 6’s hardware events and simulated GPS coords (something we need 3rd party apps to help with in the design process).

#22

I just made myself familiar with the new Swift language yesterday and I have to say that it’s finally breaking the barriers for me.

It’s fun developing with it and not as painful as writing code in pure Objective C. I finally had some breakthroughs which I didn’t have before while using xcode.

I digged into other 3rd Party SDKs like Titanium, Phonegap, and all the numerous branches last week in order to cope with a job offer I had. I personally still prefer Corona to most of these products, mainly because it is so incredibly fast in terms of performance. I think it’s perfect for games. Though I might consider Swift for business apps from now on, even if it’s only targeting iOS devices. As far as I know Corona was never intended for business apps, which is a pity in a way but I can see the reasons for that. It still lacks stable widgets IMO and the biggest drawback is that the community is not able so submit plugins without paying a huge amount of money. But maintaining the interface for open plugins is probably a headache.

All I want to say is that Corona is still very attractive, even underrated in some points and fairly criticized in some others.

#23

I just posted an article on my Game Dev Nation site that talks about my decision after playing with Swift for a while:

Swift, Corona SDK, Game Dev, and Me

http://gamedevnation.com/coronasdk/swift-corona-sdk-game-dev-and-me/

(Spoiler alert) The TL;DR version is that Swift is really cool – but Corona has too many benefits to leave.

 Jay

#24

I use Corona only for “business apps” (catalog viewers with features like display products qty in given store). I agree that some extra features would be nice, but if Swift offers a way to develop plug-ins in an easier way that Objective C I will consider Enterprise license. I do agree that it’s a large amount of money for a small company but considering that Corona is multi platform, we don’t have to spend money to develop for 2 platforms so Corona fee is finally not so high for me.

#25

Can you check your link please ? Nothing happens in my Safari ;o(

#26

Unless someone produces Swift for Android and a compatible library, then it’s going to be pretty irrelevant. I don’t think people just develop for iPhone any more.

#27

Weird, link looks and works right for me (also Safari) but I went ahead and pasted in the link to so you can copy/paste into your browser.

 Jay

#28

According to Rob, Swift for Android has no chance to born. Note that if you create an app for a private usage inside a company, focusing on one platform can make sense. 

#29

May be there’s a problem somewhere even www.gamedevnation.com isn’t available. I’m trying from east of France 

#30

You probably can’t reach http://outlawgametools.com or http://masteringcoronasdk.com either, then. There are a couple locations in France and Germany (and maybe another?) that can’t see my server. It’s a local (your local, not my local) ISP issue. It’s been like that for maybe a couple years now.

The only solution for the folks that are bit by that is using a proxy.

 Jay

#31

Works fine for me (and I’m using Safari on a Mac as well).

It would be possible to produce Swift for Android. You’d have problems implementing the Apple library, and it is a cert. that Apple would make it as painful as possible, but it is doable. 

The thing is, why would you bother. We’ve already got languages that do most of those things, lua being one of them. I take the point that it’s better than Objective-C if you aren’t a pro, but Corona still looks better for the reasons Jay writes about. It’s not really about the programming language, as long as you can do the basics in them - old Microsoft BASIC would drive you nuts but python vs lua vs ruby vs javascript (though I prefer CoffeeScript) is … meh. 

99% of the language problems I have are the same two errors, typing blink rather than blonk and it being assumed to be a default variable. It would be quite nice to have mandatory declaration, and accidentally using . and : on functions and members. Neither of which are any sort of problem.

One of the things I really like about Corona is that while it is possible to construct programs professionally, it also encourages new programmers to do a ‘poke and see’ approach to coding, which I always thought was a good way to learn. So you can do display.newRect() … and it does. I always thought that was a gateway in, you didn’t have to have reams of libraries and code just to make it do something. But because lua can do OOP and all that sort of stuff, you can construct programs in a coherent way as well.

PS: any chance of putting chaining on the setFillColor() type methods.

(or of you American folks learning how to spell ‘Colour’ :slight_smile: )

#32

I’ve asked engineering about the chaining.  No promises. 

Sure Swift could take off as a generic language.  But the language is pretty much useless without functional runtime library and I doubt that Apple will ever want to ever support Android.  So like Objective C stayed in the Apple World and didn’t make many excursions outside of their sphere of control, Swift will very likely follow the same course.

Of course Swift only addresses the SmallTalk dropped on top of C issue that was part of the problem when dealing with Native iOS development.  The incredibly complex and verbose Cocco Framework is still in place.  Trying to understand delegates and message passing is still there.  At least the swath of []'s that confuse the bajeebies out of us old school C/Java/JavaScript/PHP peeps seems to be out of the way.

Rob

#33

I don’t see Swift as a threat to Corona SDK bottom line at all. Comparing Apples to Oranges (heh heh, see what I did there? :wink: never gets you anywhere. I have always thought and continue to think that the biggest threat to Corona SDK’s future is Corona Labs itself.

Going forward, the expectation for an easy to learn, flexible SDK to be also very robust will keep getting stronger and stronger… All the Corona SDK features coming out soon (ie Windows support) will likely set us six months back in terms of stability and regression issues. This is what I predicted with G2 and it is more or less what we got back then. We still have fundamental issues with key building blocks such as webViews, widgets, mapViews and more.

Unless Corona Labs get better in shipping more stable code and faster at solving issues, I foresee that they will go extinct sooner or later. Stability, dependability and continuity is everything in this cut-throat business environment. Corona Labs leadership still favor features over stability and that is a big problem.

#34

Is Windows support coming out soon ? I hadn’t heard that - I knew that HTML5 was in beta (alpha ?) but didn’t know they were doing Windows.

Agree completely with RobM ; however good or bad Swift is, and tbh it isn’t that much better than lua or a lot of other scripting languages, it’s not a patch on Corona as a development system. I’ve been programming for nigh on 40 years and my first thought when seeing Objective-C was “WTx is that ?”.

#35

This was announced in Q4/2013

http://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/10/29/windows-phone-8-and-windows-store-support-coming-to-corona-sdk-in-2014/

and then an update more recently 

http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/03/13/windows-phone-8-update/

No idea when it will hit the beta stage but it should be sometime this year I suppose unless it gets yanked off. 

It is going to be interesting to see how it all balances, Corona Cards, HTML5, Windows 8 Builds, IOS8 release, New Plugins, Maintenance & bug fixes… I’m sure its not easy to be Walter & David putting these priorities in order. 

#36

Just to be clear:  Windows 8 **Phone** support, you will **not** be building x86 apps anytime soon.  This is the Metro/Windows App Store type apps only.  It’s getting close.

#37

Question: Does that mean it will support Windows RT?

#38

Initially we will only support Windows 8 phones (.xap or zap files).  After we get that going, then we will work on support for .appx files that will run on Metro/RT devices.

Rob

#39

Is it currently possible for an Enterprise user to build iOS plugins using Swift ? 

#40

Well, you never know, but in the past (IOS6 ->7) things have gone quite smootly. Really depends on how much work you have done and how much is left.

From my experience, don’t do too much work with a game before releasing version 1. Its a hassle to change fundamental things once it is too ready and the gamers may not like it anyway. Test it live as soon as possible, get paid later.