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Chris Lattner on Swift

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Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#181

Post by craigyk »

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 agree with you. There is a lot to like in Go, but even I can see (and I've only been programming for ~10 years) that it ignored a lot of good stuff from other languages.

They keep saying they would add generics if they feel they could "do it right" but I'm starting to not believe that. I like that the language tooling is extremely disciplined and enforces even small things, like style, but this rankles a bit considering other parts of the language design seem a bit inconsistent or haphazard. Just IMO, of course.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#182

Post by alttab »

threeseed wrote: post #131
alttab wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Objective-C up until the last couple years was powering the payments infrastructure for the Apple Online Store.

Which isn't exposing Objective-C to a wide range of engineers in the industry to the point people and relate and swap horror stories about it.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#183

Post by EpicEng »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #171
mnem wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter if a language is open source or not? Surely the most important thing is a versioned language specification?

Yes, it does matter. I have little to no interest in Swift if it's walled off into the Apple infrastructure. I would be very interested if it was opened up and available for Linux.

If there is a standard available then it doesn't matter so much. With the a spec anyone may write their own implementation. Of course, will they becomes the question then, and whether or not people will adopt it on non-Apple platforms.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#184

Post by EpicEng »

Shebanator wrote: post #173
dikei wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter ? While I think Swift is an amazing language, it would be much less useful outside the closed ecosystem of Apple. The same thing happened to C#, it never really took off outside Windows.

C# is extremely popular in the gaming industry.

A small sector perhaps, but it isn't that popular if you look at the entire industry, i.e., AAA games. No one is writing CoD or Witcher in C#.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#186

Post by PopsiclePete »

pjmlp wrote: post #135
PopsiclePete wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Go's gouroutines trace back to the Modula-2 co-routines and Ada tasks, just to cite two possible examples. Go's channels make use of CSP theory which had as first implementation Occam.

Ah, Modula-2. Yes. Very popular in the corporate world; huge hit on Github/Bitbucket as well. Lots of libraries, web frameworks....up-and-comer, for sure. I hear we'll soon be writing iOS apps in it?

Occam? No comment. At least Ada is being actively used in something, but Modula-2 and Occam? Seriously?

You can find any idea currently in use that was probably first academically tested out and "proven" in "Obscure-language-nobody-ever-uses-anymore-on-any-real-projects".

The fact that Go, this supposedly boring, unoriginal language is actually taking off in popularity, is for some reason a huge pain point for certain people who refuse to acknowledge that the "plebs" who don't bow before Haskell or similar are allowed to program in something they enjoy and that brings something new to the table, for them. New for them. New for corporate America, new for real projects, new for actual people getting actual work done, on actual projects, in actual companies, getting paid actual money for it.

How did Go haters ever survive the rise of Ruby, for example? A language which brought absolutely nothing interesting to the table, yet after people experienced RoR became more popular, in one month, than Occam, CSP, Modula-2, Oberon, combined, times 1000? You guys must have been foaming at the mouth for years.

Occam? Modula-2? Jesus Christ.

You think Go's success is undeserved? I can't wait to see your reactions when Swift surpasses "My-favorite-obscure-language-X" in number of people/libraries/projects using it before the next WWDC.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#187

Post by DerekL »

phaedryx wrote: post #59
cbrauchli wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the beard test is for OS developers.

Matz with a beard: http://www.rubyist.net/~matz/images/matz-beard.jpg He grew it specifically as a response to the "beard test" for programming languages.

Macintosh- and facial-hair-related: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Moustache.txt

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#188

Post by ralfd »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #91
slaven wrote: post #3

It's amazing that Apple managed to go from hatching the idea in mid-2010 to releasing a fully working framework 4 years later, with tight IDE integration, huge amount of testing and compatibility without a single leak (that I've heard of).

The existence of a programming language named Swift under internal development at Apple had leaked. What it was for wasn't clear – it certainly wasn't clear that it would replace Objective-C.

Source? There is no mention on Macrumors on "Swift" before June 2.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#189

Post by Vetre »

EpicEng wrote: post #184
Shebanator wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# is extremely popular in the gaming industry.

A small sector perhaps, but it isn't that popular if you look at the entire industry, i.e., AAA games. No one is writing CoD or Witcher in C#.

I respectfully disagree. You can't downplay the massive indie game libraries or even AA games out there. They're not breaking records, but they make a large amount of sales.

There are several massive communities that use Monogame (even still use XNA) and Unity. It's huge in the indie community, and is basically how the XB1, PS4, and Vita expect you to make games for their systems. The Vita Tool Chain is mostly C#.

Sure, no one is writing AAA games that require maximum graphical capabilities in C#, those teams use C++ exclusively (often with a scripting language on top). At that point that is really the only language AAA games use if they are made from scratch, otherwise they are using an engine already made in C++.

Bastion, Magika, A.R.E.S., Dust, Fez, Rogue Legacy, Reus, and Terraria are just a few made in XNA/Mono. And looking at total sales amounts, some of those games definitely had revenues over a million dollars.

That's not including unity games like: Shadowrun Returns, Rust, Wasteland 2, and Hearth Stone. These games made very good amounts of money, again, not 100% AAA, but still industry veterans.

Re: Chris Lattner on Swift

#190

Post by EpicEng »

Vetre wrote: post #189
EpicEng wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small sector perhaps, but it isn't that popular if you look at the entire industry, i.e., AAA games. No one is writing CoD or Witcher in C#.

I respectfully disagree. You can't downplay the massive indie game libraries or even AA games out there. They're not breaking records, but they make a large amount of sales. There are several massive communities that use Monogame (even still use XNA) and Unity. It's huge in the indie community, and is basically how the XB1, PS4, and Vita expect you to make games for their systems. The Vita Tool Chain is mostly C#. Su…

I suppose you're right, I shouldn't have downplayed them. I just think you need to segregate the two groups as they are almost completely different industries. To say that "C# is really popular in the video game industry" is misleading.
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