Why is MetalPetal written in Objective C ? about metalpetal HOT 2 CLOSED

MetalPetal chooses Objective-C with the following reasons:

• Apple wrote Metal.framework in Objective-C/C++.
• MetalPetal's current design can be well implemented using Objective-C.
• We can provide a thin Swift layer over the Objective-C implementation to make Swift users "feel at home". (MetalPetal/Swift, NS_SWIFT_NAME, etc.)
• We have Objective-C audiences.
• If we finally need to switch to Swift, we can easily maintain source compatibility. This means the framework users (you) do not need to change a single line of code when the framework itself switches to Swift.
• Other considerations: Some "tricks" can be done more easily on Objective-C side; Some SIMD types (simd_uint8, simd_uint16, simd_int8, simd_int16, etc) are not available with Swift (as of Swift 4.2); We cannot interact with JavaScript interfaces with pure Swift class/struct (Yes, we developed a JavaScript interface: MetalPetalJS! You can use JavaScript with JavaScriptCore.framework to build filters/image processing pipelines).

We try to design MetalPetal to be a better framework instead of just following the trends. There's no plan to switch to Swift currently. We'd like to wait until we see more advantages of using Swift instead of Objective-C, or Apple rewrites Metal.framework using Swift.

If you'd like to make MetalPetal better, you can start by using it in your own project, provide your feedback/bug report, write blogs about how you make use of MetalPetal, or provide design proposals and bug fixes.

from metalpetal.

Thank you for your well versed response.
Appreciated.

from metalpetal.