“Swift will be open source later this year”

Post by desdiv » Tue, Jun 09, 2015, 9:29 AM UTC

kodablah wrote: post #132

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #8

This places Swift right along Golang and Rust as the new interesting language.

I toyed with implementing Swift on the JVM (which is very doable by the way). The problem I've found with Swift is the minute size of the standard library. This has forced a large amount of Swift libraries to make calls to Objective-C/Cocoa classes libraries which makes it very non-portable. I haven't checked any time recently, but if a large, stable, swift-specific stdlib were to emerge then I believe it could defin…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 09, 2015, 9:37 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #429

fleitz wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confusing types and 'Java-like interfaces and design patterns' to the same degree that you're confusing swift's type system with 'what great type systems can do for you.' The type system of swift is much closer to java than to that of haskell. (Or whatever language you think has a 'great' type system) For example in F# if you just use one method the type system will infer that you need an object that has that met…

You mistake me: I wasn't talking about Swift, a language I'm barely familiar with. I was puzzled by your more general assertion about "the kind of apps where a great type system would really shine". So far you haven't explained what you meant by this; you seemed to be complaining about enterprise software, but a lot of enterprise software isn't built with programming languages featuring great or even particularly mod…

Post by scotty79 » Tue, Jun 09, 2015, 9:49 AM UTC

BuckRogers wrote: post #455

Swift for me is what Python3 should've been. For me as a Python user, this development is huge. I've been watching for the language to move to instead of Python3. Of Rust, Go, Swift and other new languages, Swift always seemed to me the most appealing language. Being the 1st class citizen on iOS makes learning this for serverside development very appealing. An ideal server language that enables single language client…

Post by sacado2 » Tue, Jun 09, 2015, 10:05 AM UTC

72deluxe wrote: post #486

dmacvicar wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same opinion as you until I started some code with it. The true is that I had never been so productive writing code. The friction from what is in your head and the code is almost 0. It is true that I ended writing a few functions that were there only because the lack of generics, the type system and other stuff being "built-in". But at the end, I think it was an order of magnitude less often than I was expe…

Your comment is interesting, it has made me want to look at the language, so thanks. But I think that the "friction from what is in your head to code" probably betrays that you weren't settled in a previous language? I only say this because I have zero friction writing C++, and have to think mildly backwards when it comes to C# or Java, and definitely Objective-C. Even PHP is like simplified C++ to me, so I write eve…

Post by herval » Tue, Jun 09, 2015, 10:17 AM UTC

pluma wrote: post #473

tomelders wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to double down on my bet that Apple will position Swift as the lingua franca to replace javascript. Front end and backend.

Good luck with that. One of the reasons JS is the lingua franca is that every browser comes with a JS runtime, all you need to get started is a plaintext text editor and all you need to publish an "app" is cheap/free web space. Mark my words: Swift won't replace JS, not even PHP. EDIT: Also, what's the point of writing Swift code in Linux if you aren't developing for iOS? As a non-iOS developer nothing at all compels…