Swift is a lot like Scala

#1

Post by javinpaul » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:08 PM UTC

Swift is a lot like Scala
leverich.github.io

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#2

Post by ghshephard » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:19 PM UTC

It's interesting, given that Joel Spolsky says of Swift "It feels exactly like go", and this person is saying, "Swift is a dialect of Scala".

Does that then imply that Go is a dialect of Scala?

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#3

Post by gamesbrainiac » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:23 PM UTC

I've heard a lot of people say that swift totally ripped off Kotlin, a new language that Jetbrains is working on.

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#4

Post by skrebbel » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:31 PM UTC

Any language designer that has both "modern, powerful features" and "familiar for current developers" as design goals, will end up with something not unlike other languages that have this. It is not a coincidence that Scala, modern C#, Kotlin, Xtend, Nemerle, Ceylon, Dart and Swift have a lot in common. They're all compiled languages with pretty high performance characteristics. They have support for OO stuff because of the "familiarity" goal (and, often, to interface with existing code) plus functional stuff because of the "powerful" goal. In a way, they're all Java with suck removed and cool stuff bolted on top.

So can we please stop the "ripoff!" arguments and look at what you can do with it? (note, i'm referring to HN comments on threads about Swift more than to the article)

C# 1 was a blatant ripoff of Java 1.2 (or something like that), with hardly anything new added, and only the biggest suck removed. Look at where C# is now. If Apple can push Swift the same way, there are good times ahead!

(assuming it gets good non-Apple support, but that's another rant)

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#5

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:32 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#6

Post by Aqueous » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:39 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #4

Any language designer that has both "modern, powerful features" and "familiar for current developers" as design goals, will end up with something not unlike other languages that have this. It is not a coincidence that Scala, modern C#, Kotlin, Xtend, Nemerle, Ceylon, Dart and Swift have a lot in common. They're all compiled languages with pretty high performance characteristics. They have support for OO stuff because…

I don't think anyone's saying Swift is a rip-off (or anyone that I know). If anything it compliments both Swift and Scala that the two are so alike.

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#7

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:41 PM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #2

It's interesting, given that Joel Spolsky says of Swift "It feels exactly like go", and this person is saying, "Swift is a dialect of Scala". Does that then imply that Go is a dialect of Scala?

[deleted]

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#8

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:43 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #4

Any language designer that has both "modern, powerful features" and "familiar for current developers" as design goals, will end up with something not unlike other languages that have this. It is not a coincidence that Scala, modern C#, Kotlin, Xtend, Nemerle, Ceylon, Dart and Swift have a lot in common. They're all compiled languages with pretty high performance characteristics. They have support for OO stuff because…

I don't think anyone's complaining about the similarity. :)

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#9

Post by wben » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:45 PM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #2

It's interesting, given that Joel Spolsky says of Swift "It feels exactly like go", and this person is saying, "Swift is a dialect of Scala". Does that then imply that Go is a dialect of Scala?

Sadly Go chose to use Garbage Collection instead of Reference Counting. I love using Python or Swift for applications that allocate (and free) real hardware resources, like OpenGL texture maps, frame buffer objects and in memory images.

Re: Swift is a lot like Scala

#10

Post by microtonal » Sun, Aug 24, 2014, 2:50 PM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #2

It's interesting, given that Joel Spolsky says of Swift "It feels exactly like go", and this person is saying, "Swift is a dialect of Scala". Does that then imply that Go is a dialect of Scala?

And they all feel like dialects of OCaml ;). (I am not saying 'Haskell' here, because it does not include object oriented programming.)

The thing is that the current generation of languages have so many overlapping features, that they are not all that different language-wise. Just like moving between Pascal, Ada, and Modula-2 was not that hard.

Also, I'd say that Go is the exception here, because in contrast to Go, Swift manages to adopt insights from the last 30 of 40 years of PL research. Go is an utterly boring language and has very little to do with Scala (or Swift).