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Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

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Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#61

Post by jchw »

Jtsummers wrote: post #56
jchw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly a reason, but Go doesn't have the adoption issues that Swift has despite Google's reputation. Go's GC may be fast, and on some workloads maybe even competitive against ARC - But, I really don't think that has anything to do with why Swift isn't seeing widespread adoption outside of the Apple ecosystem. Here's my personal opinion for why. Bear with me for a second. I just searched "Swift programming l…

> OK. It's a language by Apple, so it's not surprising that it's on Apple's website, even though I think if you want people to get the idea that it's a serious independent project you probably should give it its own top-level site personally. You mean like it does have? https://www.swift.org/

You didn't finish reading the post.

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#62

Post by [deleted] »

jchw wrote: post #61
Jtsummers wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OK. It's a language by Apple, so it's not surprising that it's on Apple's website, even though I think if you want people to get the idea that it's a serious independent project you probably should give it its own top-level site personally. You mean like it does have? https://www.swift.org/

You didn't finish reading the post.

[deleted]

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#63

Post by [deleted] »

greyw wrote: post #45
malkia wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't ship reasonable plugin for most of the popular content creation tools - be it audio, video effects, 3d modelling, etc. without support for dynamic/shared libs. Okay, maybe you can - at the risk of performance cost - e.g. your out-of process plugin that need to move data in/out with a cost, and then it over complicates - because the plugin process might've died - how do you restart it, how do you get it back…

I'm not saying you need to never use dynamic libraries. Some tools (especially handling/supporting puligins) obviously should make use of dlopen and co. It's just doesn't make sense in my head why e.g. nano dynamically links against 10 libraries. Lots of pain for little gain. Latest dynamic linking bug I just encountered is that big picture mode of steam crashes somewhere in libstdc++ when said library is too new but…

[deleted]

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#64

Post by Jtsummers »

jchw wrote: post #61
Jtsummers wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OK. It's a language by Apple, so it's not surprising that it's on Apple's website, even though I think if you want people to get the idea that it's a serious independent project you probably should give it its own top-level site personally. You mean like it does have? https://www.swift.org/

You didn't finish reading the post.

I did. But why would you include a false claim only to contradict yourself? And when, at least for me in Google, swift.org was the top link. It wasn't like it was hard to find. People don't need to go to the bottom of Apple's page on Swift to discover it.

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#65

Post by pornel »

DelightOne wrote: post #59
pornel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dynamic linking is not the only way to deliver security fixes, just one particular, limited, C-oriented solution. Note that dynamic linking is also not sufficient to change C++ templates or C header-only libraries. It shifts all of the code replacement complexity from the OS (just replace a file) onto the language and library authors (ABI compat, fragile base classes, no inlining or generics). Rust/Cargo gives you Ca…

So.. how do you rebuild apps without having access to their source code?

You ask the vendor, since they need to look after their software anyway. Don't count on closed-source abandonware to conveniently have all vulnerabilities placed in external libraries.

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#66

Post by galaxyLogic »

jchw wrote: post #53
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this might be opening a can of worms, but technically doesn’t Swift do reference counting? Which is faster than “mark and sweep” GC but will never compare to manual management (like C/C++ and rust ownership) I assume that’s the big reason.

That's certainly a reason, but Go doesn't have the adoption issues that Swift has despite Google's reputation. Go's GC may be fast, and on some workloads maybe even competitive against ARC - But, I really don't think that has anything to do with why Swift isn't seeing widespread adoption outside of the Apple ecosystem. Here's my personal opinion for why. Bear with me for a second. I just searched "Swift programming l…

Apple's goal may be is to create a SW ecosystem that mostly only works on Macs. If a Swift application could be easily compiled to run on Windows, it would be much easier for Apple users to switch to Windows or Linux.

And if Swift apps would run happily on all platforms Apple would still have an incentive to make them run fastest on Macs. Therefore it is not a good idea to rely on a computer manufacturer to provide you with a programming language.

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#67

Post by brundolf »

jchw wrote: post #43

A lot of people who are invested in the Apple ecosystem have been trying to present Swift as a general competitor to Rust, but no matter how many bullet points you list, as far as I can tell, it hasn't made any progress at all on that front, and I haven't been convinced that it will change to become closer to that any time soon, either. As far as I can tell, there's really nothing wrong with Swift, and it probably ha…

It's a bummer because I feel like I'd really like Swift if I felt it were a real, durable cross-platform language to spend time learning and using. Some of the trade-offs it makes seem really nice

But I don't feel like Swift on non-Apple platforms will ever be more than a hobby for the Apple org

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#68

Post by photonbucket »

MBCook wrote: post #22
jeroenhd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like I may eventually give Swift a try once the rewrite is done! I've been watching Swift for a while now but I don't have a Mac so I haven't had a reason to try it. Do you happen to have any idea about UI library support? Will UI still be Apple only?

I see no reason for Apple to ever make the UI stuff available on other platforms, I can’t see how that would benefit them. But there’s nothing stopping other UI libraries from making Swift bindings.

Apple surely must run a lot of linux machines internally, I imagine it would be nice for them to have internal services written in swift

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#69

Post by DelightOne »

pornel wrote: post #65
DelightOne wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.. how do you rebuild apps without having access to their source code?

You ask the vendor, since they need to look after their software anyway. Don't count on closed-source abandonware to conveniently have all vulnerabilities placed in external libraries.

I am talking about apps on the iPhone where Apple does not have access to developers' source code, right? We might be talking about different situations.

Re: Swift Achieved Dynamic Linking Where Rust Couldn't (2019)

#70

Post by jchw »

Jtsummers wrote: post #64
jchw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't finish reading the post.

I did. But why would you include a false claim only to contradict yourself? And when, at least for me in Google, swift.org was the top link. It wasn't like it was hard to find. People don't need to go to the bottom of Apple's page on Swift to discover it.

Just to be sure, I Google'd "Swift programming language" again in incognito mode and the first result is still https://developer.apple.com/swift/. Swift.org is listed, but it's so far down the page that I'd have to scroll.

It wasn't really a contradiction, I was giving you my honest first impressions as a not-Swift user. I had no reason to scroll down the result page when the first result is clearly the same Swift I'm looking for. Why wouldn't the first SEO'd result/marketing page be the right thing? I don't have this problem searching for "Go programming language" or "Rust programming language", those both point to their official top-level sites on both Duck Duck Go and Google.

Swift will always have to contend with this problem.

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