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IBM Stops Server Side Swift Framework Development

forums.swift.org

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Re: IBM Stops Server Side Swift Framework Development

#2

Post by wlesieutre »

Curious what this means for Kitura. Last I checked, the three major serverside Swift frameworks were Kitura, Vapor, and Perfect.

Perfect doesn’t look like it’s under active development, and if this means Kitura stops being maintained, it’s down to just Vapor as an active project.

Re: IBM Stops Server Side Swift Framework Development

#3

Post by veidr »

Two guys that IBM was paying to work on server-side Swift are stepping down from the server working group (presumably because IBM decided not to pay them to do that anymore).

I think these guys were best known for Kitura, the (previously) IBM-backed web app framework.

I don't do web apps in Swift "for realz" (I use TypeScript and tools like Angular and Koa.js for that kind of thing), but I do use Swift on Linux and have built some toy ones using both Kitura and Vapor.

My impression is that Vapor gained a lot more traction than Kitura did, so in some ways this might just be "the market choosing" and Kitura heading for the sunset.

Re: IBM Stops Server Side Swift Framework Development

#6

Post by unpluggedcord »

ksec wrote: post #4

I am wondering what this means in broader terms, IBM no longer have their weight behind Swift? ( Focusing more on Java which would make more sense from IBM perspective ) Or is this just not working on Web Framework ?

Is it fair to say IBM threw their weight behind Swift?

Re: IBM Stops Server Side Swift Framework Development

#7

Post by thrower123 »

Outside of iOS, is there really any traction for Swift development? It certainly feels like it is settling into an also-ran position. And really, mobile apps are turning out to be a dead-end, and people don't seem to be actually investing in native clients anymore, they just slap their website in a browser control.

Re: IBM Stops Server Side Swift Framework Development

#8

Post by wwright »

thrower123 wrote: post #7

Outside of iOS, is there really any traction for Swift development? It certainly feels like it is settling into an also-ran position. And really, mobile apps are turning out to be a dead-end, and people don't seem to be actually investing in native clients anymore, they just slap their website in a browser control.

As an Apple fan and a programming language nerd, I have basically no interest in ever using the language. I spend a lot of time in C++, Haskell, Rust, and Kubernetes, but Swift just feels pointlessly complicated to me. (C++ I think is also pointlessly complicated, but the rest at least have a point ;-)

Re: IBM Stops Server Side Swift Framework Development

#10

Post by woadwarrior01 »

thrower123 wrote: post #7

Outside of iOS, is there really any traction for Swift development? It certainly feels like it is settling into an also-ran position. And really, mobile apps are turning out to be a dead-end, and people don't seem to be actually investing in native clients anymore, they just slap their website in a browser control.

The creator of Swift (and LLVM), Chris Lattner now works for Google. There’s already an experimental version of Tensorflow[1] for Swift. I personally believe that Swift will really shine in differentiable programming and thus machine learning. A little over a decade ago, most of the machine learning community was using either Matlab (and it’s open source clone Octave) or R.

It took a long time for the machine learning eco-system around Python to develop. I believe that’s the case with Swift as well.

[1]: https://www.tensorflow.org/swift/

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