Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa • Hacker News Board

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#91

Post by mamcx » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

capitalsigma wrote: post #19

Looks pretty shady. Proprietary code through-and-through, and it's "cross platform" because it compiles down to their own proprietary language. It's unclear how you deal with native libraries, if at all. I'll pass, thanks.

I know this guys from long time. Their RemObjects/DataAbstract is IMHO the best remoting framework ever done (I have use Delphi, .NET, Python, Obj-C, VisualFoxPro and test several frameworks for that).

They are supporting their implementation of Pascal for several years now, and my experience of using DataAbstract from obj-c show the interfacing is good.

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#92

Post by rsynnott » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

mukundmr wrote: post #26

Reading through the details dampened my excitement. It has proprietary extensions to the Swift language ( http://docs.elementscompiler.com/Silver/LanguageExtensions/ ) and it has differences and limitations as well. ( http://docs.elementscompiler.com/Silver/DifferencesAndLimita... ). They do however state it is free for use.

It's understandable that they require a few extensions, for concepts from other environments. Some of the limitations are unfortunate, though.

"Patterns are not supported in Switch cases, yet"

:(

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#93

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

mukundmr wrote: post #26

Reading through the details dampened my excitement. It has proprietary extensions to the Swift language ( http://docs.elementscompiler.com/Silver/LanguageExtensions/ ) and it has differences and limitations as well. ( http://docs.elementscompiler.com/Silver/DifferencesAndLimita... ). They do however state it is free for use.

[deleted]

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#94

Post by dwarfland » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

csharperer wrote: post #53

capitalsigma wrote: post #19

Looks pretty shady. Proprietary code through-and-through, and it's "cross platform" because it compiles down to their own proprietary language. It's unclear how you deal with native libraries, if at all. I'll pass, thanks.

Not only that, but good luck keeping up with Apple's developments once they start buckling down and updating the language.

We have a long history of doing more than "keeping up" ;)

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#95

Post by dwarfland » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #92

mukundmr wrote: post #26

Reading through the details dampened my excitement. It has proprietary extensions to the Swift language ( http://docs.elementscompiler.com/Silver/LanguageExtensions/ ) and it has differences and limitations as well. ( http://docs.elementscompiler.com/Silver/DifferencesAndLimita... ). They do however state it is free for use.

It's understandable that they require a few extensions, for concepts from other environments. Some of the limitations are unfortunate, though. "Patterns are not supported in Switch cases, yet" :(

"yet". and actually implemented for the next Beta drop.

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#96

Post by rsynnott » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

dwarfland wrote: post #95

rsynnott wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's understandable that they require a few extensions, for concepts from other environments. Some of the limitations are unfortunate, though. "Patterns are not supported in Switch cases, yet" :(

"yet". and actually implemented for the next Beta drop.

Ah, great!

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#97

Post by throwaway1xx2 » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

csharperer wrote: post #52

throwaway1xx2 wrote: post #31

Anyone interested in building open source parser API for Swift? Join me here http://compilerjobs.com/db/jobs_view.php?editid1=984 If parser API succeeds, we will also target making a compiler.

What are the legalities?

Swift is just a language specification. It cannot be patented or copyright-ed. Anyone is free to make tools around the language specification. Just like there are many compilers for C/C++ on different platforms, we intend to make one for Swift on Linux/Windows.

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#98

Post by martingordon » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 6:41 PM UTC

martingordon wrote: post #22

I'm curious to know how well it performs. I spent the better part of this weekend rewriting 4k lines of Swift in Objective-C because I couldn't deal with the 60-90 second compile times.

And of course, Apple just seeded an Xcode beta that supports incremental builds.

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#99

Post by mikeash » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

The fact that arrays and dictionaries are classes rather than structs is a major problem with this. That's a massive semantic difference between their implementation and Apple's, and it's one that won't show up as a compile-time error. Taking code written for Apple's implementation and using it on Silver is likely to result in a nightmare of crazy debugging trying to track down all the cases where you're now sharing arrays/dictionaries rather than copying them. This really needs to be fixed, and if it's truly impossible, IMO it's bad enough that the thing should be scrapped.

Re: Silver: A free implementation of Swift for .NET, Java, Android, and Cocoa

#100

Post by mikeash » Mon, Feb 09, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

preslavrachev wrote: post #51

martingordon wrote: post #22

I'm curious to know how well it performs. I spent the better part of this weekend rewriting 4k lines of Swift in Objective-C because I couldn't deal with the 60-90 second compile times.

So, the Swift compiler is slow? I mean, I expected it to be slower than Objective-C due to its dynamic nature, but that slow? Disclosure: I write Android apps, so I'm only occasionally peeking at how the iOS dev scene is developing. I've already been thinking of trying to write Android apps in Scala, but maybe this Swift to Java compiler is also worth looking at

Apple only just today released an update to the compiler that enabled incremental builds. Before that it had to recompile everything every time. That alone will probably make a big difference.