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IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

computerworld.com

31–40 of 235 posts

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#31
post #21

I cannot take this seriously. Even minor versions of Swift have breaking language changes and depredations. That tells me precisely it is too early for the enterprise.

That sounds like every enterprise application I've ever used – if you make money selling support and consulting, churn is awesome!

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#32
post #28
post #22

Hilarious that IBM still thinks of the enterprise as the arbiter of quality. Consumer is now setting the defacto standards, including on things like information security. IBM's days of having a voice in that conversation are probably more limited than they realize.

would you car to give some exampled ? My opinion is that the enterprise is a somewhat separate ecosystem. Thus "enterprise-ready" -ready is not a mark of quality, it's a mark of belonging to the enterprise ecosystem.

I'm wondering what makes swift ready for the enterprise ecosystem. It barely seems to meet the requirements of the "enthusiastic consumer" outside of Apple OS.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#34
post #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?

I think the pitch is that despite static typing, it offers a lot of multi-paradigm high-level features while remaining elegant with fairly minimal syntax compared to other native static languages like Rust or C++. It automatically manages memory but without a stop-the-world garbage collector and goes a long way to opening a lot of flexible design options to any developer: it has great support for generic programming, object orientation, and functional programming.

The downsides? Well, I find some of its syntax choices a bit odd and inconsistent; I think the pursuit of elegance could have gone much further. And, while I celebrate its pervasive use of closures/lambdas and functional idioms in my many contexts, it lacks true functional data structures that would be necessary to really write in a proper functional style with confidence that the runtime wouldn't suffer.

Also, the implementation of its high-level features is somewhat magical and hidden. You can't depend on performance when using them until you really study them. So much so, that WWDC had a big talk about how to choose language features depending on the type of performance you need, and none of it was intuitive.

Additionally, at least on the Apple platforms, its Objective-C heritage can be a bit annoying. In particular, you can't mix and match closures with "selectors", which is a real shame and missed opportunity for flexibility and elegance.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#35
post #30
post #26

I see a bunch of stuff in their github ( https://github.com/ibm-swift ), but not the language implementation itself. Does anyone know what its license is?

Do you mean https://github.com/apple/swift ?

The post is about IBM's Swift implementation.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#36
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What language do you prefer over Swift? I'm curious.

I'm not sure I would choose something over the latest version, primarily because of how little a time investment using it can be... but then again it all comes down to what the task at hand is doesn't it ;P

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#37
post #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?

It is backed by Apple and will be main language to develop for iOS/macOS/tvOS/watchOS systems.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#38
post #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?

1. Inferred static nominal typing with generics

2. 1st class support for Optionals

3. Support for Structs and Classes

4. Native binary & scripting mode

5. Automatic reference counting (instead of garbage collection)

6. Large standard library

7. Large corporate backer (Apple)

8. Open source

9. Good C, C++, & Obj-C interoperability

10. Decently fast (https://medium.com/@qutheory/server-side-swift-vs-the-other-...)

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#39
post #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?

It allows enterprises to use their current iOS and macOS developers to do Web Application and server side applications. For developers it gives them additional ecosystems to use their skills on without having to learn a new language from scratch.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#40
post #16

Does this loosely translate to "We want to sell Swift consulting services to the enterprise"?

Yes, preferably on top of IBM Cloud. http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/swift/

After the Helion debacle, I have my doubts about "enterprise" clouds.
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