[boundsj]

I think the point is that, perhaps, ios and osx developers' biggest pain point was not objective c, but rather the regressions and missing features of the development environment. Taking on a whole new closed source (at least for now) language seems like it spreads resources a little thin -- even at Apple.

Since it's already done I don't want swift to go away at this point. However, if given a choice between keeping objc and having a much better development environment or getting a totally new language (and the division it will bring) and a buggy IDE, I would've picked the former.

[derefr]

I don’t think the kind of people who fix UX bugs, and the kind of people who design new type systems, have much overlap. Putting a bunch of the latter to work on a new language doesn’t decrease the number of the former available to work on XCode, in all but the most global “now Apple has infinitesimally less money to budget for new developers” sense.

[msie]

If not now then never. You can't wait until Xcode becomes perfect before you release a new language.