Will Swift render Objective-C obsolete in relation to iOS Development?

Looks like Swift will be the way forward but no reason why you should stop from learning iOS. The concepts, design patterns and APIs will all remain the same. If anything it will be much easier to make the switch from Objective-C to Swift because it looks like an easier language to work with. Due to the NDA we won't be able to release a course until iOS is released publicly.

Definitely not useless! We're still reading up on it and absorbing the news, but this will be a good discussion.

Swift will work side-by-side with Objective-C code, so it's not like Objective-C will disappear quickly. And I am assuming that familiarity with Objective-C for iOS development will help decrease the learning curve for Swift.

What's important in any development is to know what you can do and how to do it on the platform. The language is actually a detail. It may seem like a big detail when you're first starting out, but the most important aspect are those programming concepts and things unique to the platform.

Anyhow, this is strange and exciting news. Hope we get more details in the next few days.

I have mixed feelings about this announcement. I've just invested quite a lot of time into Objective-C and grown to really like it, and now this. I wonder how will this impact the job market for iOS developers, and how quickly would companies switch to it - but my bet is that Swift positions won't really start popping up until the end of next year, and I see no reason for developers to re-write their trusty old apps in an entirely new language that just got announced hours ago without any previous exposure, so it seems to me that Objective-C devs would be in demand for at least another year or so.

I'm wondering the same thing, I'm just getting into Obj-C and am wondering I should put that on hold and start learning Swift?

This depressed me a little because I'm moving soon in hopes of finding a position in iOS development... This sounds a little selfish and esoteric, but I don't want Swift to be so easy that anybody can work up an iOS app without a learning curve...

"Named parameters brought forward from Objective-C are expressed in a clean syntax that makes APIs in Swift even easier to read and maintain. Inferred types make code cleaner and less prone to mistakes, while modules eliminate headers and provide namespaces. Memory is managed automatically, and you don’t even need to type semi-colons." So Swift is Apple's version of Python? :P I feel a little bit more relieved as I am a self-proclaimed Python master.

Just wondering, will Apple still be accepting apps written in Objective-C when iOS 8 is released?