Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Swift Programming Language Evolution

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 181 posts

Re: Swift Programming Language Evolution

#21

Post by mirsadm »

matt4077 wrote: post #11
Someone1234 wrote: post #2

So Swift has been out awhile, what do people think of it? What other language would you compare it to (e.g. C#, C, C++, etc)? What about the libraries are they well laid out?

I'd put Go at the top of the languages to compare it to. Maybe Java as well. The ecosystem still needs some time, but Swift's potential on the server is excellent: - It is incredibly fast compared to current interpreted languages (i. e. factor 30+ vs. Python, possibly faster than C) - Linux & OS X, open source - Typed, safe People like node.js mostly b/c it allows some code to be written once and run on both the serv…

Every new language has someone claim it's faster than C. I'll believe it when I see it.

Re: Swift Programming Language Evolution

#23

Post by drakenot »

Karunamon wrote: post #3

Are there any plans in place for locking down the syntax? Major release 3 is coming and developers are still being expected to hit a moving target. One of the nice things about C is that K&R era C is just as valid as C written nowadays, but Swift appears to be going in the opposite direction, every major release adding and removing bits of syntax. As someone unfamiliar with the language, it makes me not want to pick…

Swift is still really young. Now is the time for these breaking changes. As someone who has been working with Swift since its public release, I haven't found the "moving target" to be that disruptive to my development. Even the cases that the migrator fails to handle have taken me less than an hour or so to fix myself on a fairly large Swift app.

Re: Swift Programming Language Evolution

#24

Post by skrowl »

beerwulf wrote: post #20
skrowl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried it an pretty quickly went back to C#. The Apple-only nature was the major downside to me, so maybe these kinds of changes will help (assuming it sees wide adoption outside of Apple-land). Check your local job boards, but if sell yourself as a Swift dev you're likely to be pigeon-holed into Apple-centric development for the foreseeable future. With Apple sales and market share dropping like a rock in the last…

That's rich coming from a C# developer looking at mobile...

You may have missed the announcement where MS bought out Xamarin and is now giving it away for free. You owe it to yourself to at least give it a try while waiting for actual cross-platform Swift.

90+% of your mobile code can be shared between Android and iOS. Not sure if that's something currently possible with Swift or not, but it was worth keeping C# around for our needs.

We're more of a "mobile app is something we also offer" and web is our main presence though, so your mileage may vary (especially if you're mobile-only or mobile-centric).

Re: Swift Programming Language Evolution

#25

Post by thomasahle »

lorenzhs wrote: post #15
matt4077 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put Go at the top of the languages to compare it to. Maybe Java as well. The ecosystem still needs some time, but Swift's potential on the server is excellent: - It is incredibly fast compared to current interpreted languages (i. e. factor 30+ vs. Python, possibly faster than C) - Linux & OS X, open source - Typed, safe People like node.js mostly b/c it allows some code to be written once and run on both the serv…

Do you have a link to some benchmarks at hand? Your "possibly faster than C" claim sounds too good to be true without a source, but I'd very much like to be proven wrong :)

By http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programs-... Swift's performance is similar to Java's, but quite a bit faster when working with many objects: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/swift.html On a few benchmarks it's faster than C as well: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan... though not most.

I suppose they were able to do the binary-tree benchmark so much better than Java, because Swift supports 'UnsafeMutablePointers': http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes...

Edit: This Quora question mentions the performance of Swift before and after unsafe programs were included: https://www.quora.com/In-terms-of-performance-speed-is-Swift... The memory safe version used to be about 24x slower than C.

Re: Swift Programming Language Evolution

#29

Post by gnufied »

kris-s wrote: post #8
Someone1234 wrote: post #2

So Swift has been out awhile, what do people think of it? What other language would you compare it to (e.g. C#, C, C++, etc)? What about the libraries are they well laid out?

My favorite thing about Swift is that is seems to get out of the way - and when it gets in the way it's usually with a nifty language feature (like the { $0 + $1 } closure syntax). I'm very excited for the future - between Go and Swift we now have two compiled fast languages that are almost as expressive as their slower dynamic/interpreted cousins. As an aside, I like that Apple is betting the farm on ARC. I wish I c…

I love go but if one thing that it is not is - expressive, especially when compared to its dynamic cousins like Ruby/Python. That is a tradeoff I am willing to live with, but there is no need to get starry eyed over it.

Re: Swift Programming Language Evolution

#30

Post by wyldfire »

ryandev wrote: post #27

I've never understood the fascination with Swift. What's wrong with Objective C?

Objective-C likely suffers from similar problems of C and C++. It's just too easy to shoot yourself in the foot with these languages.

Rust, D, golang, swift all appear to share a common goal of having a mid-to-low-level imperative/OO language that has learned from C/C++/ObjC's mistakes.

Post reply on HN