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What’s new in Swift 6.2

hackingwithswift.com

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Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#131

Post by pkulak »

favorited wrote: post #95
pkulak wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reference counting is done at runtime. It’s a runtime garbage collector. It’s different than a generational GC, but it’s GC. Those cycles to increment and decrement a counter attached to every object at ever touch aren’t free. All the downvotes in the world won’t make that free.

> It’s a runtime garbage collector What does "it" refer to? The function calls to _swift_release_()? Because if function calls are a "garbage collector," then free() is a garbage collector. And if free() is a garbage collector, then the term is too vague to have any useful meaning.

Yes. Garbage collectors also call free. They call functions. They do all kinds of things. They even increment and decrement reference counters on your behalf. When there’s a system that manages your memory for you at runtime, that’s a garbage collector.

Swift is great. And reference counting is exactly the right kind of GC for UIs because there are no pauses. But GC it still is. And it wrecks throughput and is not appropriate for situations where you don’t want GC.

And in reference to `shared_ptr`, or Rc and Arc in Rust, that's manual memory management because you're doing it... manually. Swift is like C++ or Rust if you were never allowed to have a reference to anything that wasn't behind an Arc. Then it's no longer manual, it's automatic.

Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#132

Post by codr7 »

msie wrote: post #117
rcruzeiro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Swift’s goals are great, I like the syntax, but the language implementation seems to just special case everything rather than having coherent language design. This could not be furthest for the truth. The entire process of proposing a new language feature to getting it implemented and shipped is out in the open for everyone to participate/see. https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution

Too many cooks!

And no Steve Jobs to pull them down to earth.

Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#134

Post by rockbruno »

w10-1 wrote: post #31

The article doesn’t give enough attention to the glacial but steady changes in the ownership model that will have great benefit in avoiding copies in value types, Swift’s strength and Achilles heel. I have to say Paul Hudson has almost single-handedly taken over communicating the essentials of Swift to the world; he’s fantastically reliable, brief but enthusiastic, guiding people around the many pitfalls.

Agree on Paul Hudson being great, but not so much on the guiding around the pitfalls. One big issue with the Swift community in general in my opinion is that a lot of the community content is incredibly shallow. Most of them are fine with "there's this feature and you can do X with it, cool right?" style-content, meaning very few people actually take the time to explain what the trade-offs are / performance considerations / how things work under the hood, and IMO this took a huge negative hit in the average skill level of Swift developers.

Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#135

Post by codr7 »

int_19h wrote: post #45
soegaard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The feature is fine but there are better reasons to introduce it. For macro generated code it is convenient to use identifiers that people won't accidently use in their own code. The ability to use arbitrary identifiers solve that.

The other reason is interop with other languages, which might have their own rules for identifiers.

I'm trying and failing miserably to think of a single example of such a language.

Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#136

Post by favorited »

pkulak wrote: post #131
favorited wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a runtime garbage collector What does "it" refer to? The function calls to _swift_release_()? Because if function calls are a "garbage collector," then free() is a garbage collector. And if free() is a garbage collector, then the term is too vague to have any useful meaning.

Yes. Garbage collectors also call free. They call functions. They do all kinds of things. They even increment and decrement reference counters on your behalf. When there’s a system that manages your memory for you at runtime, that’s a garbage collector. Swift is great. And reference counting is exactly the right kind of GC for UIs because there are no pauses. But GC it still is. And it wrecks throughput and is not ap…

> Yes. Garbage collectors also call free. They call functions.

Ok, what is calling `free` here? Point to the garbage collector. Show me the thing that is collecting the garbage.

> And in reference to `shared_ptr`, or Rc and Arc in Rust, that's manual memory management because you're doing it... manually.

You're also doing it manually when you decide to make a type a class in Swift. You're opting in to reference counting when you write a class, or use a type that is backed by a class.

It also seems that our goalposts have gone missing. Before, "it" (whatever "it" is) was a garbage collector because it happened at runtime:

> That reference counting is done at runtime. It’s a runtime garbage collector.

shared_ptr, Rc, and Arc also manage their memory at runtime. But now, "it's" a garbage collector because the compiler generates the retain/release calls...

Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#137

Post by danielscrubs »

ardit33 wrote: post #93

Swift is amateur hour in action by academics that don't value practicality. The new Concurrency was ill thought, and done by people that just perhaps either don't have enough practical experience, or are so enamored with the actor paradigm (erlang) that they had to shove it down the throat in a ecosystem where it is not used that much. No one is really using Swift for distributed programing. Glad they are backtrackin…

Academics value simplicity and fundamentals… Swift with its timeouts smells of Big Company incentives where everyone wants to make a contribution and management that see themselves as babysitters instead of product creators with competition.

Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#138

Post by WD-42 »

travisgriggs wrote: post #63

Honest question. Not trying to troll. One of the pitches in the earlier days was “C/Objective-C OK, but you can’t write safe/next level code with it—-Swift will close that gap.” N years later, it doesn’t feel like there has been a step change in Apple software quality; if anything Apple software feels less solid, and looks cool “look what I did” extension points. I mean, some of the tings you could do with runtime ca…

This might just be the long term effects of a platform dominated by people who generally value hardware over software.

Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#139

Post by mdhb »

msie wrote: post #117
rcruzeiro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Swift’s goals are great, I like the syntax, but the language implementation seems to just special case everything rather than having coherent language design. This could not be furthest for the truth. The entire process of proposing a new language feature to getting it implemented and shipped is out in the open for everyone to participate/see. https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution

Too many cooks!

Conversely, Dart does the exact same thing and is probably the best designed language I’ve ever come across

Re: What’s new in Swift 6.2

#140

Post by elcritch »

rcruzeiro wrote: post #86
elcritch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same. Apple software quality certainly hasn’t increased . Years back I remember some apps crashing suddenly after updating MacOS. I checked the binary and saw they’d started adding Swift. Half a decade later it seems like it should be better and Swift stuff should be stabilized. But nope, I’ve had more little glitches in both iOS and MacOS. It’s hard to say it’s due to Swift, and not management priorities.…

> Swift’s goals are great, I like the syntax, but the language implementation seems to just special case everything rather than having coherent language design. This could not be furthest for the truth. The entire process of proposing a new language feature to getting it implemented and shipped is out in the open for everyone to participate/see. https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution

What’s that got to do with coherent language design? Just because it’s somewhat open doesn’t mean it has consistent design. Then by all accounts Apple just forced through language changes needed for SwiftUI.
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