CocoaConf Seattle Reveals a Dearth of Server-Side Swift Know-How
Educating developers on the merits of using backend Swift frameworks must come to the fore
While attending the CocoaConf Seattle Apple developers’ conference earlier this month, I was reminded of how new the concept of server-side Swift is to most developers. Perhaps I can be forgiven for this perspective; I’m deeply entrenched in creating and working on a Swift-based framework for backend development and have for more than a year.
True, Apple only made Swift open source about five months ago, but typically when Apple makes a major development-related announcement, developers climb all over themselves to absorb and begin using whatever new tool or platform is made available to them.
That’s not to suggest Swift isn’t of interest to the global development community; far from it. But of the developers in attendance with server-side experience at CocoaConf Seattle, most are still using older backend frameworks such as Node.js, .NET, and Ruby. It raised my eyebrows when it dawned on me how many of them have yet to give any of the server-side Swift frameworks like Perfect a twirl.
Meanwhile, of the application-side developers at the conference, most did not have a lot of server-side programming experience. That’s not out of the ordinary but it does reveal a glaring opportunity for frontend devs with an eye on the future to expand their skill sets.
Putting Developers First
In addition to attending CocoaConf Seattle out of sheer interest, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation about Perfect at the event. I was pleased my talk was well received by the attendees who heard it and that it generated much discussion.
Some of the questions I fielded about Perfect and server-side Swift development in general made one thing abundantly clear to me: it is critical for server-side Swift projects and their creators (including PerfectlySoft) to up our game with respect to helping all types of developers get familiar with using Swift on the server side.
Those endeavours ought to include:
- Putting extra effort into helping developers with little to no experience on the server side start a project. We must provide clear how-to-begin resources, with many tutorials, and hands-on instruction sessions and meetups
- We need to shine spotlights on applications developed in any of the frameworks, to highlight where server-side Swift is particularly helpful, and how it’s being deployed
- Despite our competitive natures, all of the server-side Swift framework providers need to put devs first by demonstrating the performance and reliability of their respective frameworks
Additional CocoaConf Seattle Learnings
Overall, the conference was well organized and many of the talks I listened to were interesting. No developer should ever come away from a conference of this magnitude without learning something, and I did learn new things about the Auto Layout toolbox, and the performance of some functions such as map, reduce, and their lazy variants.
My thanks to the organizers of the event for putting on a great conference. To any and all Apple developers, I encourage you to attend one of the outstanding CocoaConf conferences in your neck of the woods, and to learn how using a server-side Swift framework can benefit you and your projects.
Kyle Jessup is PerfectlySoft’s CTO and lead developer. Contact him directly by email or on Twitter.
