> What are the other alternatives, Nim?
You should check out Kotlin. Design-wise, it's very similar to Swift, but it has a bigger userbase on the backend and an (imo) more promising future.
Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
31–40 of 60 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#32I think you're misinterpreting the direction of Rust.
Rust 1.65 didn't add a new feature, it removed a limitation on an existing feature.
That's the direction I want my languages to be going in.
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#33I was also interested in server sided Swift for a bit but didn't go very far with it.
Java is the "obvious" choice for statically typed web backends. Personally I'll recommend Go and C#. Both have a low learning barrier to entry, check your boxes for backend languages, and have ample resources online. I would choose C# (on ASP.NET Core) if you want flexible typing and inheritance, and Go if you want "simple" imperative code. Rust is also popular but I don't know enough to comment on it.
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#34Not really a fan of the language, nor necessarily a fan of the decision, but “rust in the Linux kernel” should probably tell you the future of systems languages and suggest a re-evaluation of the language.
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#35I have a production app live using Swift/Vapor. I created this app solely for the purpose of learning full-stack development using Swift, and so far it has been an amazing ride. The best thing about using Swift on the server if you're already an iOS developer is that a ton of models and DTOs are simply shared across your backend and your app(s). I have deployed my backend on a tiny DO droplet using Docker, and it jus…
Used Vapor/Swift in production for a good 2 years. While Swift is really one of the best languages out there, unfortunately it didn't work out.
The problem was being strongly tied to macOS & XCode, and every update may or may not break your ability to deploy the server. Vapor itself seems to be always changing as well.
Inter-op with various web-services is often quite a headache too. Sometimes there's support for Swift or even an official SDK, but it's often not so straightforward to actually get it working. You're definitely in untreated territory here, and it shows.
So we moved NodeJS. I feel Node is a meme at this point, but man does it simply work. There are code snippets for everything and usually it doesn't take longer then 30min to figure out how to do something.
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#36> But C++ has become somewhat an over-engineered language that is mostly in a to-be-not-to-be state of feature development.
You can say the same for Swift. But just like with C++, you can always stick to simpler and smaller subset and make great things with it.
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#37What is the nature of your project that you need a “systems programming language” server-side?
Asked differently, why are Java (or a mature JVM language) or C# not a good fit?
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#38Swift on Server has become quite mature over the past years. The ecosystem features a libraries for a lot of tools you want to integrate. Furthermore, it is being used in production by some major companies besides Apple, e.g. Amazon has a bunch of production services running on it.
One of the greatest things about Swift on Server is not only the language but also the community. They are very open to new joiners and try to help whenever possible. Furthermore, with the latest Swift features such as Swift Concurrency it looks even more promising.
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#39I have a production app live using Swift/Vapor. I created this app solely for the purpose of learning full-stack development using Swift, and so far it has been an amazing ride. The best thing about using Swift on the server if you're already an iOS developer is that a ton of models and DTOs are simply shared across your backend and your app(s). I have deployed my backend on a tiny DO droplet using Docker, and it jus…
I also had a terrific time building with Vapor, but I had to put down the project and then pick it up a year later… between the interim release (v2 — v4 I think) I found the my product basically impossible to upgrade, not a lot of clear documentation on the changes. I was pretty dismayed by how far the API drifted.
Re: Ask HN: What is the future of Swift on the server-side?
#40Swift on Server has become quite mature over the past years. The ecosystem features a libraries for a lot of tools you want to integrate. Furthermore, it is being used in production by some major companies besides Apple, e.g. Amazon has a bunch of production services running on it. One of the greatest things about Swift on Server is not only the language but also the community. They are very open to new joiners and t…
Source on Amazon running Swift services? Excuse my doubt, but I've never heard of that and it seems very unlikely to me.