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Swift Distributed Actors

swift.org

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Re: Swift Distributed Actors

#11

Post by ternaryoperator »

DenseComet wrote: post #3

This seems like a super interesting feature to have as part of a language. I hope Swift can eventually become more of a general purpose language, as its actually pretty nice and they're introducing features like this that clearly targets server-side programming. However it seems right now its tied to much to just iOS development and Xcode, which doesn't make for a great experience using it for other things.

> I hope Swift can eventually become more of a general purpose language, as its actually pretty nice and they're introducing features like this that clearly targets server-side programming.

I hope for this too. I did a personal project in Swift on Linux and found that I loved the language. However, I was greatly frustrated by the lack of libraries. For Swift to reach the mainstream, IMHO, the Swift Foundation needs to move much more of the ecosystem to platforms other than Apple's. I would vote for that even ahead of adding new features to the language.

Re: Swift Distributed Actors

#12

Post by jshier »

chrismsimpson wrote: post #10
Decabytes wrote: post #4

How is the Swift experience outside of the Apple ecosystem? And how does it compare to other languages like C# and Java?

I was perusing the implementation of String the other day and it’s intrinsically linked to the ObjC runtime to allow toll free bridging. The multi platform story for Swift is non existent.

This is only true on Apple platforms. String, of course, exists on all platforms. Of all the issues Swift's cross platform story has, this isn't one.

Re: Swift Distributed Actors

#13

Post by watermelon0 »

alexashka wrote: post #7

Where is the side to side comparison of features and to-do between this and existing distributed actor implementations, such as erlang + otp or java and whatever thing it uses? This approach of ignoring the rest of the world and explaining Swift concepts as if they exist in a vacuum is frustrating and counter-productive. Even if this were a totally new feature, I'd expect links to research papers. It is one thing to…

I skimmed through the blog post, and it seems to me that they are not claiming they invented something new, just that they are adding this to Swift language.

(Distributed) actor model is nothing new, but I definitely wouldn't classify it as something that's common in other languages. To my knowledge Erlang/OTP is the only mainstream language where this is part of the standard library.

There are implementations for other languages, such as Akka for Java/Scala and Orleans for dotnet, but most languages (sadly) don't have a battle-tested implementation of this.

Re: Swift Distributed Actors

#14

Post by metaltyphoon »

DenseComet wrote: post #3

This seems like a super interesting feature to have as part of a language. I hope Swift can eventually become more of a general purpose language, as its actually pretty nice and they're introducing features like this that clearly targets server-side programming. However it seems right now its tied to much to just iOS development and Xcode, which doesn't make for a great experience using it for other things.

Well, this seems interesting.

https://ericsink.com/entries/sourcegear_bridge.html

Re: Swift Distributed Actors

#15

Post by nielsbot »

arcticbull wrote: post #2

Woah, very cool - I guess Distributed Objects is getting a facelift and making a comeback. [1] What's old is new again, as they say. [1] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

DO was super cool... Made things very easy.

That said, I guess Swift is trying to do a better version of DO.

Re: Swift Distributed Actors

#17

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #11
DenseComet wrote: post #3

This seems like a super interesting feature to have as part of a language. I hope Swift can eventually become more of a general purpose language, as its actually pretty nice and they're introducing features like this that clearly targets server-side programming. However it seems right now its tied to much to just iOS development and Xcode, which doesn't make for a great experience using it for other things.

> I hope Swift can eventually become more of a general purpose language, as its actually pretty nice and they're introducing features like this that clearly targets server-side programming. I hope for this too. I did a personal project in Swift on Linux and found that I loved the language. However, I was greatly frustrated by the lack of libraries. For Swift to reach the mainstream, IMHO, the Swift Foundation needs t…

> MHO, the Swift Foundation needs to move much more of the ecosystem to platforms other than Apple's.

I suspect Apple is trying to do this for straightforward reasons like wanting to remain relevant and foster community growth as to retain credibility… while also subtly trying to not encourage the use of Swift as a language for any other GUI framework/platform than Cocoa + macOS. Obviously I don’t have any evidence to support my fantasy speculation (well, X11 for macOS is dead) - but consider how Apple is so very protective of their UX moat (and PWAs be damned). It’s not in Apple’s interests to facilitate and support any kind of true cross-platform UI framework: remember how Java AWT/Swing apps were like on OS X? The majority of dispassionate (I.e. not Panic Inc) devs are never going to optimise a cross-platform UI for macOS because the whole point of using an xplat UI is so you don’t need to spend time on platform-specific code. Those two reasons combine form a vicious-cycle negative feedback loop that devalues their platform.

But with the web finally becoming the true, real, cross-platform that Microsoft was then-irrationally terrified of 25 years ago, I don’t know what Apple’s strategy is to remain the best provider of the best UX when everyone is going to be using Chromium in some form. And if Apple keeps pushing their own native apps devs to their hostile App Store while everyone else moves to the web, then the value-prop of an Apple computer looks bad compared to a Chromebook which is essentially just-as-locked-down and just-as-capable, just without iOS integration and a modest selection of (albeit) high-quality boutique Mac App Store apps.

————

On a related note: Apple does not have long-term support commitments as a matter of policy - which means enterprise/slow-moving/blue-chips won’t be interested in using Swift at all (compared to ISO-backed C++, Oracle’s Java, or MS’ .NET). Apple is going to have to maintain Swift’s support for Win32 and *nix in the long-run if they need to build their credibility and win-over large programming projects - but it’s just so against their corporate culture. It reminds me of their middling support for Safari for Windows. I know Apple gets Win32 and nix support for Swift “for free” by piggybacking off Clang+LLVM, but that’s basically the same as making Swift more like Java (“xplat for free”) but that’s just the bare-minimum they need to do: without Apple actively investing significantly in the developer experience for non-Apple platforms it just isn’t going to take-off. And they can’t do that for fear that a critical-mass of hackers will port Cocoa to Win32.

Swift is basically analogue to Google’s Dart+Flutter but it wants to be like Go.

Re: Swift Distributed Actors

#18

Post by alexashka »

watermelon0 wrote: post #13
alexashka wrote: post #7

Where is the side to side comparison of features and to-do between this and existing distributed actor implementations, such as erlang + otp or java and whatever thing it uses? This approach of ignoring the rest of the world and explaining Swift concepts as if they exist in a vacuum is frustrating and counter-productive. Even if this were a totally new feature, I'd expect links to research papers. It is one thing to…

I skimmed through the blog post, and it seems to me that they are not claiming they invented something new, just that they are adding this to Swift language. (Distributed) actor model is nothing new, but I definitely wouldn't classify it as something that's common in other languages. To my knowledge Erlang/OTP is the only mainstream language where this is part of the standard library. There are implementations for ot…

They are adding features they 'took' to put it kindly from other existing, mature implementations without giving any credit or acknowledgement.

Not only that, they expect people to test their beta grade software because they keep releasing it half baked ever since the release of Swift itself.

It's embarrassing and it also angers me because these companies have wall gardened their ecosystems to proprietary languages and tools that all do the same thing poorly, differently and in ways that prevent sane cross platform development, on purpose, this being yet another apple-only 'thing'.

Here's Swift's roadmap: copy C# and other languages for the next 5 years while making sure you can't write cross platform code by adding arbitrary garbage like SwiftUI or this 'distributed actor' implementation that will surely differ and not be compatible with existing features of other languages and their tooling.

Re: Swift Distributed Actors

#20

Post by guerrilla »

So wasn't this part of the original dream for Smalltalk? Then this would seem to be coming full circle: Smalltalk, Objective C, Swift and back. I know some of you are Alan Kay fans so maybe you can comment on that aspect.
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