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Apple is rewriting Foundation in Swift

github.com

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Re: Apple is rewriting Foundation in Swift

#5

Post by Sophistifunk »

cutler wrote: post #2

Considering Swift 1.0 was released in September 2014 I'm not exactly bowled over by how long it's taken Apple, with all their resources, to rewrite Foundation.

It's how they've always done things. It was about 10 years after the last 68k Mac shipped before the entire classic OS was power. Same with moving everything from carbon to cocoa.

Re: Apple is rewriting Foundation in Swift

#6

Post by goranmoomin »

cutler wrote: post #2

Considering Swift 1.0 was released in September 2014 I'm not exactly bowled over by how long it's taken Apple, with all their resources, to rewrite Foundation.

Well, Foundation was a mature Obj-C library at that point, Swift’s future was unclear, and Swift needed to have better Obj-C interop anyway.

I think that Foundation being a Obj-C library effectively forced Apple into eating their own dog food (for the sorely needed Swift/Obj-C interop), so I don’t think rewriting Foundation in Swift would have been a good strategy for Apple.

Re: Apple is rewriting Foundation in Swift

#9

Post by jmyeet »

cutler wrote: post #2

Considering Swift 1.0 was released in September 2014 I'm not exactly bowled over by how long it's taken Apple, with all their resources, to rewrite Foundation.

Rust began in the late 2000s and only in the last few years has started to reach a level of mainstream acceptance. Adoption for new programming languages takes significant time. Compiler development takes an awful lot of time. For Swift to be this mainstream after being introduced in 2014 is (IMHO) really quick.

As for Foundation, core frameworks almost never get rewritten and for good reason. It's almost never worth it. Best case? You get functional equivalence. Worst case? You introduce bugs into something that millions or even billions of devices depend on. Those bugfixes may take many years. Every now and again we see bugfixes that are 10-20+ years old in things like GCC or the Linux kernel.

Rewrites should never be undertaken lightly, particularly with less mature languages. Apple is (IMHO) being relatively aggressive with this.

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