Swift 6.3

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

dzonga wrote: post #13

good to see incredible stuff being shipped in Swift. Haven't used it since v3 though. around 2015-17 - Swift could have easily dethroned Python. it was simple enough - very fast - could plug into the C/C++ ecosystem. Hence all the numeric stuff people were doing in Python powered by C++ libraries could've been done with Swift. the server ecosystem was starting to come to life, even supported by IBM. I think the letdo…

Post by ModernMech » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

hu3 wrote: post #54

frizlab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't seem to care. I don’t believe that’s true. Things are moving constantly, and in the right direction. Then again it would help if you cited particular grievances, because being a regular (cross-platform/cross-target) Swift user I am not sure what you are talking about… I did not choose ClearSurgery’s example randomly. I was at a conference recently where the CTO was here, and he explicitly told us they we…

> I don’t believe that’s true. Things are moving constantly, and in the right direction. Hah! I'll use that argument if I ever get PIP'd. No but seriously, constantly moving doesn't mean fast enough. Swift took took long to have cross-platform support. And it is still uberslow to compile. To the point of language servers giving up on analyzing it and timeout.

Post by embedding-shape » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #134

embedding-shape wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the languages started tiny, complexity eventually grows on them. And then of course the case that proves the opposite, Clojure. Sure, new ideas appear, but core language is more or less unchanged since introduced, rock solid and decades old projects still run just fine, although usually a bit faster.

That is because Clojure is done, there is hardly anything being done other than probably what matters to NuBank and Datomic mostly. Also its market share adoption kind of shows it.

Post by zffr » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

merlindru wrote: post #74

frizlab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't seem to care. I don’t believe that’s true. Things are moving constantly, and in the right direction. Then again it would help if you cited particular grievances, because being a regular (cross-platform/cross-target) Swift user I am not sure what you are talking about… I did not choose ClearSurgery’s example randomly. I was at a conference recently where the CTO was here, and he explicitly told us they we…

they seem to be adding more and more keywords if they really want me to use this lang for everything, they'd have to 1. massively improve compilation speed, 2. get the ecosystem going (what's the correct way to spin up an http server like with express?) and 3. get rid of roughly 150 of the 200 keywords there are especially w.r.t. the last one, of course everyone frets at huge breaking changes like this, so it won't h…

Post by iamcalledrob » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #109

willtemperley wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised, guard is really useful, especially when unwrapping optionals. It's terse, explicit and encourages defensive programming. internal should definitely go though.

The absence of guard in Kotlin is one of those things that regularly trips me up when bouncing between it and Swift. Rather than Swift losing guard I’d prefer if Kotlin gained it.

  // Swift
  guard let foo = maybeFoo else {
    print("missing foo")
    return false
  }

  // Kotlin
  val foo = maybeFoo ?: run {
    print("missing foo")
    return false
  }