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Chris Lattner on Swift

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Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#71

Post by Cookingboy »

niix wrote: post #9

Really excited for Swift. I've tried and failed many times to learn Objective C and felt that the barrier to entry was a bit to high for myself. As a someone who writes JavaScript for a living, Swift is very inviting.

Not trying to be rude, but if you've tried and actually FAILED to learn Objective-C multiple times, then you will have a much bigger problem with actually learning the Cocoa framework yourself. Objective-C does have a non-standard syntax, but its barrier of entry for actual learning is purely psychological and not technical.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#72

Post by jfb »

mikeash wrote: post #47
melito wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because Swift is so new only a small percentage of people have actually looked at the language spec. First thing I thought of when I saw all the func calls, curly braces and beaks (->) was "this looks like in between Lua and Go" After starting to dig into the book, it's pretty apparent that isn't the case

It's bizarre how focused programmers are on syntax. It seems like half the comments about Swift have been comparing it to languages which it superficially resembles at the syntax level. And the other half of the comments are along the lines of, "I can't stand Objective-C's brackets, this looks much better." It's like that scene from The Matrix: "I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head." I'd…

Most of the commenting on a new language, particularly here (as opposed to on e.g. Lambda The Ultimate) is from people who aren't going to write a single line in it in anger; it's not surprising that idle commentary would focus on syntax. It's of a piece with all internet commentary, which rarely gets below the outermost layer of thinking about anything.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#73

Post by m_mueller »

Cookingboy wrote: post #71
niix wrote: post #9

Really excited for Swift. I've tried and failed many times to learn Objective C and felt that the barrier to entry was a bit to high for myself. As a someone who writes JavaScript for a living, Swift is very inviting.

Not trying to be rude, but if you've tried and actually FAILED to learn Objective-C multiple times, then you will have a much bigger problem with actually learning the Cocoa framework yourself. Objective-C does have a non-standard syntax, but its barrier of entry for actual learning is purely psychological and not technical.

Maybe the mistake could lie in starting with Objective C without first learning C? I'm thinking that a reasonably solid C foundation helps a lot in understanding why and how Obj-C works.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#74

Post by coob »

personZ wrote: post #53
necubi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep comparing Swift and Go, as they have diametrically opposed philosophies. As stated succinctly by Bryan O'Sullivan (one of the most prominent people in the Haskell community) on Twitter: "It's interesting to compare Swift and Go. One has caught up to the 1990s in language design, with the other firmly in the 60s." Swift includes many of the language features that have been touted by…

The only really innovative parts of Go are its concurrency support, which Swift seems to be completely lacking. Worth noting that one of the greatest problems in software development is concurrency support and its ease of use/robustness. It is a critical and growing issue. In contrast, having or not having generics, optionals (in C# these are nullable types), algebraic data types (which in Go is interface, albiet min…

Genuine question: what does Go provide in terms of concurrency that Swift + GCD doesn't?

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#75

Post by Angostura »

enraged_camel wrote: post #35

I like Chris and what he has done, but... >>The Swift language is the product of tireless effort from a team of language experts, documentation gurus, compiler optimization ninjas... Seriously? What is a "documentation guru"? What is a "compiler optimization ninja"? I find language like this so distracting and asinine that I had to stop reading. Am I the only one?

It is quite possible that e was referring to people who he believed had taught him interesting aspects about the spirit of documentation or the philosophical way to view compiler optimisation. In which case the word would be apt.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#76

Post by vacri »

Arjuna wrote: post #10

Chris demonstrated Swift and Playgrounds at WWDC 2014: "I can build anything with Swift... from a social media application, all the way up to a high-performance, 3D game using Metal." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKMAV6owYh4#t=6436 He wrote this chapter (entitled LLVM ) in the book, "The Architecture of Open Source Applications": http://aosabook.org/en/llvm.html * * * On the general topic, I wrote this [1] a littl…

Which languages that can produce a high performance 3D game wouldn't be able to also produce a social media application?

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#77

Post by mikeash »

jfb wrote: post #72
mikeash wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bizarre how focused programmers are on syntax. It seems like half the comments about Swift have been comparing it to languages which it superficially resembles at the syntax level. And the other half of the comments are along the lines of, "I can't stand Objective-C's brackets, this looks much better." It's like that scene from The Matrix: "I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head." I'd…

Most of the commenting on a new language, particularly here (as opposed to on e.g. Lambda The Ultimate) is from people who aren't going to write a single line in it in anger; it's not surprising that idle commentary would focus on syntax. It's of a piece with all internet commentary, which rarely gets below the outermost layer of thinking about anything.

I've been seeing much the same from programmers invested in the Apple ecosystem who will likely be spending all day writing nothing but Swift within a year.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#78

Post by duaneb »

vacri wrote: post #76
Arjuna wrote: post #10

Chris demonstrated Swift and Playgrounds at WWDC 2014: "I can build anything with Swift... from a social media application, all the way up to a high-performance, 3D game using Metal." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKMAV6owYh4#t=6436 He wrote this chapter (entitled LLVM ) in the book, "The Architecture of Open Source Applications": http://aosabook.org/en/llvm.html * * * On the general topic, I wrote this [1] a littl…

Which languages that can produce a high performance 3D game wouldn't be able to also produce a social media application?

C++ would be absolutely terrible for social media applications. There, the barrier isn't usually the speed but correctness and maintenance overhead.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#79

Post by austinz »

mikeash wrote: post #77
jfb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the commenting on a new language, particularly here (as opposed to on e.g. Lambda The Ultimate) is from people who aren't going to write a single line in it in anger; it's not surprising that idle commentary would focus on syntax. It's of a piece with all internet commentary, which rarely gets below the outermost layer of thinking about anything.

I've been seeing much the same from programmers invested in the Apple ecosystem who will likely be spending all day writing nothing but Swift within a year.

Lots of people are having a hard time understanding the difference between dynamic typing and static typing with type inference.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#80

Post by Gigablah »

bsdetector wrote: post #21
ibdknox wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that makes me sad is that because of their focus on secrecy, they're doomed to relearn all that we learned along the way. Having played with the swift playground stuff, just an hour long conversation could've made a big difference. Such is the way of Apple though.

On the other hand by keeping it secret and internal they avoided making bad decisions due to defensiveness and stubbornness. An example of this is Go; they don't actually take input from outsiders (generics) and when they have had to give in to outside ideas they implement it poorly just to be different (exceptions as panic). They would rather people put in a no-op printf to avoid the unused package error rather than…

People can be defensive and stubborn regardless of whether there is outside input.

Your eagerness to bash on Go has managed to upend your grasp of logic.

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