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IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

computerworld.com

11–20 of 235 posts

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#11

I literally just started to go back and re-learn some of the core concepts for the latest version... wow is Swift ugly! EDIT: I'm not attempting to discredit the greatness that can be had... Just wanted to describe a feeling which I had while using it is all!

I don't see how your second sentence follows from the first one? It's true that Swift is heavily type safe but that makes it appealing to me. I actually really enjoy writing Swift.

Would you rather it were dynamic so you could write less code or something?

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#12
This reminds me of the big announcement of IBM partnering with Apple for iPad in the enterprise. I wonder how that worked out?

I am a little sceptical of IBM's business plan, all in on Watson, etc., but I have used their Bluemix hosting services and it is fairly nice. BlueMix is has a great free tier level' you can run one or two small web services or apps for free. It is a good idea supporting Swift in the server.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#13
post #3

Which version (Swift 2, 3 or 4)?

Swift 3 is the version with large source change. It required a lot of refactoring. Fortunately, many of the fixes were handled automatically by Xcode. I'm keeping a list of changes:

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/09/17/my-ios-10-and-swift-...

Any breaking changes going forward should be much less. Of course, you might be in the camp that wants zero breaking changes, then Swift probably isn't for you.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#14
post #10

I literally just started to go back and re-learn some of the core concepts for the latest version... wow is Swift ugly! EDIT: I'm not attempting to discredit the greatness that can be had... Just wanted to describe a feeling which I had while using it is all!

It's a systems language, and imo way more beautiful than c++.

Absolutely. I'm not attempting to put it down as somehow not worthy of anyones time, just thought I'd mention how "cushioned" it all felt :P

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#15
post #2

IBM says: we are ready to start making money by adding another buzzy technology and using it to provide shitware.

why weren't they ready before, according to you?

Given the way the "enterprise" works I would guess that their clients caught on to the high level of BS and low level of value of previous "technologies". In true enterprise fashion they have now found a new shiny marketing opportunity and only recently put the finishing touches on the sales presentations ;)

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#17

How is it going with Linux, Windows, BSD, etc. platforms? Anyone with experience using Swift on something other than an Apple product have a story?

AFAIK, Swift runs on Ubuntu, I think they've ported a large part of the Foundation framework to Swift.

On Windows, some people reported about using Swift under the new Bash for Windows (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#18
post #11

I literally just started to go back and re-learn some of the core concepts for the latest version... wow is Swift ugly! EDIT: I'm not attempting to discredit the greatness that can be had... Just wanted to describe a feeling which I had while using it is all!

I don't see how your second sentence follows from the first one? It's true that Swift is heavily type safe but that makes it appealing to me. I actually really enjoy writing Swift. Would you rather it were dynamic so you could write less code or something?

I should have specified that it wasnt an attempt to put down the language, as there are many, MANY caveats... only wanted to point out how writing it almost makes me feel unclean somehow hah

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#19

How is it going with Linux, Windows, BSD, etc. platforms? Anyone with experience using Swift on something other than an Apple product have a story?

It runs fine on Ubuntu, but you might need umake to install it, or compile from source if still using 14.04 LTS.

The GCC ABI 5.0 breakage doesn't play well with Swift source code, when using their own binaries.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#20
So... what's the "elevator pitch" for Swift?

It has anything interesting over Elixir or Go (well, go's feature is "lack of feature" but you know what I mean) or Scala or Kotlin?

I know that iOS and MacOS desperately needed a modern language, and great for them that they have it now, but does the rest of the world need it?

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