Category: Technology

Recently, I learned programming for the iPhone, using Apple’s new programming language called “Swift”.

To me, it looks like after Steve Jobs, Apple just doesn’t have any vision or control left.  The programming language, Swift, reminded me of another programming language called Ada.  Like Ada, Swift has everything but the kitchen sink.  (On second thoughts, maybe there _is_ a kitchen sink somewhere in there, I don’t know the complete language yet 🙂 )  Like Ada, Swift is one of those _have to_ learn languages.  If you want to program iPhones, you have to learn Swift.  If you wanted to program for Defense Department, you had to learn Ada.  This forced learning by the US DoD did not save Ada from rapid demise.  (By contrast, Android picked a slick programming language already popular, Java.)

Good programming languages do not include every feature available in the technology – the designers’ brilliance shines through in deciding what features to include and how to combine them.  Swift designers had a lot of knowledge, but no sharpness at all – they just couldn’t decide what to leave behind.

This shoddy approach extends to the development environment.  I have worked in a lot of development environments, and have never seen anything as shoddy as Apple’s development environment Xcode.

My take – Apple has no good leadership anymore, the company is going down the tubes.  Modi government I think just gave them a lifeline, but China appears rather angry at them, just the Indian market might not be enough to keep this lost company churning.

These are times when it is difficult to find someone who is not keenly interacting with a smart phone, be it in a cafeteria or a classroom. Even people of my age, have become ‘touch-savvy’ , if not ‘tech-savvy’. Guys who have problem understanding whats an app, understand and use ‘WhatsApp’

There was the time when business men realized that a website had become an integral necessity in their business cards. Today , a business without an app is severely ‘handi-apped’ .

For our NDA(National Defence Academy) course reunion, I made a basic website and was brazing myself for a stampede of visitors vying to upload a deluge of articles, photographs and all kinds of memorabilia.

While our whatsApp group had an average of 150 posts a day along with all kinds of media, the website was like the NDA library, where none ventured unless forced to.

I wished I could make an app for smart-phones. A cursory browse on the net led me to Android Studio, a beta grade software for app development. Once I installed it on my system, one thing led to another and I surprised myself by creating an app in 15 days. In fact, I created two, one for the course reunion and one for this blog.

Here’s the link to download the app for my blog. (You have to ‘allow installation of apps from unknown sources’ by going to settings —-security.).

I just love the learning environment in the IT world today. The net is full of tutorials, Discussion forums, open source development software and most importantly people who love to share knowledge.

Appy times are here again. Anything is possible in IT and through IT.