Question: for someone like me who’s completely new to iOS and would like to eventually get into a junior iOS dev role, how should I view the importance of learning Objective-C (after starting with Swift) in regard to interviewing for junior dev positions?
I’m seeing a lot of opinions online about this topic in general that Obj-C will remain very relevant and important for many years to come because of all the legacy code including libraries; this surprised me a little bit because by now I would have thought it would be optional or minimally important to know Obj-C, but I get the sense employers in general need you to know it, and wow that really jumps-up the learning curve of getting into iOS development.
@flightcrew Thanks very much for your question!
It is true that Objective-C is still relevant, and by no means will it be deprecated any time soon. However, I will say that as a newbie, your focus SHOULD be purely on Swift. Most if not all companies are doing development purely in Swift from this point on, and it is legacy code that is still in Objective-C. Why should you focus on Swift? Simple answer: because Apple is. All tutorial sites, including our own focus on Swift. That being said, Obj-C is without doubt a “nice to have” skill, but I would only spend time on it only after having a solid grounding in Swift. Companies hire experts, and it is better to know one, single programming language well, then partially know two. 
I will say this, the iOS API is quite similar for both Swift and Obj-C (in terms of syntax), so what I would suggest is after learning Swift, and the fundamentals of iOS, you could go through some tutorials on the language fundamentals of Objective-C, and truthfully say to an employer that you know both, but have a stronger emphasis on Swift.
I hope this helps!
All the best!
1 Like
Hi Syedfa, thanks for such a great response - very helpful! I’ve heard, too, that there’s a lot of similarities in syntax between the two languages so that aspect is helpful.
Make it a great week,
Will
@flightcrew Thanks so much for your kind words. Much appreciated!
I am very happy that my response was of some benefit.
All the best to you, and yours.
Sincerely;
Fayyaz