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Chris Lattner on Swift

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Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#111

Post by bsdetector »

enneff wrote: post #60
bsdetector wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, I'm not sure how to begin responding to that. Go has taken a lot of suggestions from the open source community. Check the Go 1 mailing list discussions for examples. But panic existed before the opensource release and is not a substitute for exceptions, and nobody has actually proposed a viable generics implementation. The unused variable/package thing is a fundamental to the project's goals of working well at s…

I realize I'm in the Lion's Den. I feel that if you stepped outside the Google employee and Hacker News bubble you would see Go stubbornly refusing to have modern features, as I do.

I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro, and yes I did read the Go mailing list occasionally in the early days. But if it makes you feel better to call my opinions ignorant then I hope that's working out for you.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#112

Post by ibdknox »

sjwright wrote: post #108
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.

> because of their focus on secrecy, they're doomed to relearn all that we learned That's wrong, condescending and misses the point. Wrong because the developers were not cut off from learning what was learned by others. Condescending in the way it implies that there's a royal "we" of people that should be consulted whenever any programming language is conceived. And it misses the point because some types of learning…

Hm. I said it was sad, not wrong.

Let's say you take direct inspiration for something you're working on and you know someone's been there and thought a lot about it. Wouldn't it make sense to ask them about it? It's certainly true that some mistakes are better learned by making them yourself, but a whole lot aren't. Hell, half the time it's just stuff you're too close to see anymore.

The Swift playground is strikingly similar to many of the things we've done in Light Table. It's wonderful that Apple is taking that and running with it and I want these things to end up out there and make things better for devs. But I could've helped them skip some of the crap along the way and I've worked with other large organizations to help them do exactly that.

> To suggest that your opinion is more valid than theirs is hubris.

My opinion is no more valid, but given that their work looks fairly like our own, I certainly have the benefit of past experience. This isn't about hubris. I have a unique perspective in this particular case, one that no one else will have, as the creator of one of the things they were "heavily influenced" by. I'd rather they took advantage of that so that they can continue to push things even further and not fall into some traps that we did at Microsoft and with LT itself.

In any case, I'm sorry I seem to have offended you. My goal is not self aggrandizement, it's just to help do my part in making things better for us all.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#113

Post by thibautx »

Extremely excited about this language's versatility. Also great to see the work of my school's Alumni and professors going into production. This is the third time I've come across the LLVM compiler in industry use (albeit nothing to the scale of iOS' language) - anecdotally during my internship search this last semester. Will be very interesting to take Professor Adve's compiler course soon.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#114

Post by [deleted] »

personZ wrote: post #106
pcwalton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 99% of the articles about the profound importance of generics are people building nothing of interest for anyone, and it is exactly that vaguery of design that makes generics seem so important. I think it's quite a stretch to say that people who have written articles about generics are almost never building anything of importance. The browser you used to post this comment makes extensive use of generics via C++ tem…

I think it's quite a stretch to say that people who have written articles about generics I said 99%. The vast majority of language observations online are language tourists, and the observations are seldom practical or rational, but instead are of the "in kicking the tires and making nothing in practical, here are my thoughts". Those sorts of posts dominate. Generics have a place, but their importance is...overstated…

[deleted]

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#115

Post by jbarham »

bsdetector wrote: post #111
enneff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I'm not sure how to begin responding to that. Go has taken a lot of suggestions from the open source community. Check the Go 1 mailing list discussions for examples. But panic existed before the opensource release and is not a substitute for exceptions, and nobody has actually proposed a viable generics implementation. The unused variable/package thing is a fundamental to the project's goals of working well at s…

I realize I'm in the Lion's Den. I feel that if you stepped outside the Google employee and Hacker News bubble you would see Go stubbornly refusing to have modern features, as I do. I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro, and yes I did read the Go mailing list occasionally in the early days. But if it makes you feel better to call my opinions ignorant then I hope that's…

> I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro

A very strange argument from authority considering Ken Thompson is one of Go's designers...

Considering the fact that 700 people attended the inaugural Go conference, and the variety of speakers (http://gophercon.com/schedule/), I think it's safe to say that Go has gained traction far beyond the Google employee and HN "bubbles".

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#116

Post by alttab »

jeremyjh wrote: post #104
TillE wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Objective C really that much better? If you have decent APIs/libraries, C++ would be just fine.

C++ can be just fine. It can also be used to write software bad enough to quit over, that dozens of people will maintain for decades. And they talk about it. I don't think Objective C has that problem.

To be fair, Objective C hasn't run billion dollar companies for decades yet either (in mass).

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#117

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ibdknox wrote: post #112
sjwright wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because of their focus on secrecy, they're doomed to relearn all that we learned That's wrong, condescending and misses the point. Wrong because the developers were not cut off from learning what was learned by others. Condescending in the way it implies that there's a royal "we" of people that should be consulted whenever any programming language is conceived. And it misses the point because some types of learning…

Hm. I said it was sad, not wrong. Let's say you take direct inspiration for something you're working on and you know someone's been there and thought a lot about it. Wouldn't it make sense to ask them about it? It's certainly true that some mistakes are better learned by making them yourself, but a whole lot aren't. Hell, half the time it's just stuff you're too close to see anymore. The Swift playground is strikingl…

What is light table's equivalent to playground's timeline assistant?

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#118

Post by oliyoung »

steele wrote: post #66

I can't afford to ignore it as it matures, but with my dev setup right now, I just can't afford it. Hoping to see this work well in Linux and Windows.

XCode6 runs alongside XCode5, you can safely play with Playground and build apps in the simulator, and even install iOS8 on a dev device and deploy there, without affecting your toolchain

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#119

Post by bsdetector »

jbarham wrote: post #115
bsdetector wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize I'm in the Lion's Den. I feel that if you stepped outside the Google employee and Hacker News bubble you would see Go stubbornly refusing to have modern features, as I do. I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro, and yes I did read the Go mailing list occasionally in the early days. But if it makes you feel better to call my opinions ignorant then I hope that's…

> I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro A very strange argument from authority considering Ken Thompson is one of Go's designers... Considering the fact that 700 people attended the inaugural Go conference, and the variety of speakers ( http://gophercon.com/schedule/ ), I think it's safe to say that Go has gained traction far beyond the Google employee and HN "bubbles"…

The argument of authority of Go designers is actually my point. By designing the language in public (even before having source available) they now don't want to admit their errors, and neither do their supporters, because they are authorities, supposedly. I'm thinking of Pike in particular.

By keeping these discussions private, the Apple team did not need to protect their egos or their authority. We do not know who is responsible for which decisions at which points in the design, and they don't feel the need to defend their choices in public.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#120

Post by PopsiclePete »

pjmlp wrote: post #28
dominiek23 wrote: post #20

Funny how he forgot to mention Golang somehow while that seems to be one of the bigger inspirations for the language.

The language has nothing from Go. Almost all Go features exist in languages since the early 80's, outside the C family.

Yeah? Interesting. Because all popular languages that I've used, up until Go, fail at concurrency at such a basic level, that it's almost as if their authors don't understand what concurrency is. Except Erlang. But then again, I said popular.

C/C++/Ruby/Javasscript/Python/Java/C# - all fail miserably, utterly and completely at concurrency. What Go accomplishes with channels, goroutines and the "select" statement has been an eye-opener for me.

Watching people struggle with threads/mutexes/shared memory in the 21st century, or with some half-baked library, is truly sad.

I'm really surprised that all Go features have been present since the 80's - It's strange I have utterly missed a feature as basic as concurrency in those! Very interesting.

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