Steve Troughton-SmithFeb 5

'Codex in Xcode can probably take an entire ObjC project and convert it to Swift on its own'

Alright, bet.

I handed it the classic SameGame codebase, gave it my coding style markdown file, and said "So this is an old ObjC app for iOS. I would like you to completely convert it 1:1 to modern Swift, with the coding style in mind. Leave no ObjC behind"

No other prompts needed; I needed to update a few legacy things in the xcode project settings (min OS version, Swift version, etc), and got this:

Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 5
All automatic, not a line of ObjC remains. Deprecated APIs were all modernized. 5,400 lines of ObjC became 2900 lines of Swift 5
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 5
I had long since rewritten the app myself in Swift, so this was only a contrived test of Xcode's new agentic programming support. But it did in 5 mins what took me months (years?) of on-again/off-again effort and preparation
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 5
Nonetheless, if this is what you're up against, you have /absolutely no shot/ of convincing a brand new Xcode developer that they should spend weeks doing something the hard way ('because that's how I did it!') when the IDE will do it for you in the background before you've finished your coffee. This feels much more like the shift from assembly code, even punch cards, to programming languages. If you've kept within the Apple bubble up to now, this stuff is going to be a massive shock
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 5
Your only reprieve is that this stuff is so expensive right now. Codex at $20/mo is fine for tinkering, but you'd be forced into the $200/mo plan if you used this every day. Claude, which I've never used, also sounds way too expensive for my taste. If (and when) LLM-based agentic programming like this becomes free, gameover
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 5

ObjC to Swift is too easy, all things considered. What about porting the app to another platform, like… Android?

Hold my beer

Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 5

So yeah now I have a 1:1 recreation of classic SameGame in Android's Java/XML 😑

I passed it the Swift version of the project (*that it had created from the original ObjC project*), and instructed it to turn it into an Android project that I could just open in Android Studio and install. Did the lot, made the build config, transcoded the audio to .ogg, and now it just… *exists* on Android.

It preserved my animations, my layout, my navigation, everything. It did require guidance for last mile

Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 5
It even supports splitscreen 🤣
Show threadCodingPanic
@stroughtonsmith How is the legibility of both projects? If you wanted to circle back and actually code or fix bugs, is it even possible to do so?
Feb 5 at 5:30pmIvory for iOS
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 5
@codingpanic it looks completely reasonable, but I think the honest answer is that you'd ask the AI to do it for you 😅
Show threadJos noemt het gewoon melkFeb 7
@codingpanic @stroughtonsmith The new vendor lock-in