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  5. J2ObjC vs Swift

J2ObjC vs Swift

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Swift
Swift
Stacks21.9K
Followers13.6K
Votes1.3K
J2ObjC
J2ObjC
Stacks8
Followers20
Votes6
GitHub Stars6.0K
Forks991

J2ObjC vs Swift: What are the differences?

Developers describe J2ObjC as "Java to iOS Objective-C translation tool and runtime used by Google Inbox to share 70% of its code across Android, iOS, and Web". J2ObjC is an open-source command-line tool from Google that translates Java code to Objective-C for the iOS (iPhone/iPad) platform. This tool enables Java code to be part of an iOS application's build, as no editing of the generated files is necessary. The goal is to write an app's non-UI code (such as data access, or application logic) in Java, which is then shared by web apps (using GWT), Android apps, and iOS apps. On the other hand, Swift is detailed as "An innovative new programming language for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch". Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

J2ObjC and Swift are primarily classified as "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" and "Languages" tools respectively.

"Backed by Google" is the primary reason why developers consider J2ObjC over the competitors, whereas "Ios" was stated as the key factor in picking Swift.

J2ObjC and Swift are both open source tools. It seems that Swift with 48.4K GitHub stars and 7.76K forks on GitHub has more adoption than J2ObjC with 5.47K GitHub stars and 771 GitHub forks.

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Advice on Swift, J2ObjC

vargamatyas
vargamatyas

Nov 22, 2020

Needs adviceonPythonPythonSwiftSwiftReact NativeReact Native

Hey guys, I learned the basics (OOP, data structures & some algorithms) with Python, but now I want to learn iOS development. I am considering to learn Swift, but I am afraid how the native mobile development will die out because of the cross-platform frameworks and reviews. My idea is to learn web development first and then learn React Native, and after all of that, finally Swift. What do you think about this roadmap? Should I just learn Swift first due to the pros of the native apps?

126k views126k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Swift
Swift
J2ObjC
J2ObjC

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

J2ObjC is an open-source command-line tool from Google that translates Java code to Objective-C for the iOS (iPhone/iPad) platform. This tool enables Java code to be part of an iOS application's build, as no editing of the generated files is necessary. The goal is to write an app's non-UI code (such as data access, or application logic) in Java, which is then shared by web apps (using GWT), Android apps, and iOS apps.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
6.0K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
991
Stacks
21.9K
Stacks
8
Followers
13.6K
Followers
20
Votes
1.3K
Votes
6
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 259
    Ios
  • 180
    Elegant
  • 126
    Not Objective-C
  • 107
    Backed by apple
  • 93
    Type inference
Cons
  • 6
    Must own a mac
  • 2
    Memory leaks are not uncommon
  • 1
    Is a lot more effort than lua to make simple functions
  • 1
    Its classes compile to roughly 300 lines of assembly
  • 1
    Very irritatingly picky about things that’s
Pros
  • 4
    Backed by Google
  • 1
    Made it possible to quickly port a hardware driver
  • 1
    Access to existing Java libraries
Integrations
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Java
Java
Objective-C
Objective-C

What are some alternatives to Swift, J2ObjC?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Ionic

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

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