Good on him. As others have said, well-communicated move. He is leaving Swift in an excellent position and has set up an outstanding structure where Swift is way more than just one person. He spent more than 5 years building Swift inside Apple, so I can definitely understand he is ready for his next challenge. Can't wait to see what it is!
Update on the Swift Project Lead
11–20 of 159 posts
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#12I'm wondering if this means that the major work on Swift the language is complete? I've avoided it since it seems every year the language or the API changes... has it now settled? I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
They've promised source code compatibility starting with Swift 3.0 and up. This means that in theory you should be able to recompile a Swift 3 code with the Swift 4 compiler.
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#13I'm wondering if this means that the major work on Swift the language is complete? I've avoided it since it seems every year the language or the API changes... has it now settled? I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
By all accounts, we won't see another change on the same level as Swift 2.0 -> Swift 3.0 for some time. Having shipped production apps for all major releases of Swift, it definitely feels like the syntax and foundation of the language has settled in 3.0. Now it seems more focused on building on top of that.
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#14I'm wondering if this means that the major work on Swift the language is complete? I've avoided it since it seems every year the language or the API changes... has it now settled? I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
If you're truly worried, I would hold off just a little bit longer. Swift ABI stability is slated for Swift 4.
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#15I quickly read this as Chris Laettner and then quickly realized there's no way he ever worked at Apple.
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#16I'm wondering if this means that the major work on Swift the language is complete? I've avoided it since it seems every year the language or the API changes... has it now settled? I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
Swift 4 will be ABI stable, i.e. you will be able to use Swift 4 binaries with Swift 5. So, starting in September things will really settle down, or at least, upgrades are not a problem anymore. I guess that XCode will stay compatible with Swift 4+ for a long time in the future, and it might even mean that changes in Swift 5+ will only be additions, like blocks in Obj-C were.
UPDATE: Another comment here says that code compatibility is already fixed with Swift 3+.
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#17I'm wondering if this means that the major work on Swift the language is complete? I've avoided it since it seems every year the language or the API changes... has it now settled? I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
If you're truly worried, I would hold off just a little bit longer. Swift ABI stability is slated for Swift 4.
Is that expected this summer?
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#18Let's start speculating what he might do instead. I have a hunch that this might pursue some Bret Victor-esque product maybe something like Swift Playgrounds for the iPad but less educational and more dev oriented. But I'm basing that on relatively nothing.
I hear he is going to work at an incubator started by the guy who sold the airline booking aggregator Aviato to a major airline in 2008.
;-)
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#19I'm wondering if this means that the major work on Swift the language is complete? I've avoided it since it seems every year the language or the API changes... has it now settled? I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
> I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
The changes are mostly syntactic and like API changes. And Xcode has an integrated migration tool that's not too bad. I ported approx. 23KLOC of Swift (http://audiokit.io) from 2 to 3 in like 3 hours. And the changes are generally for the better.
Re: Update on the Swift Project Lead
#20I'm wondering if this means that the major work on Swift the language is complete? I've avoided it since it seems every year the language or the API changes... has it now settled? I really didn't want to go back rewriting code every year.
They've promised source code compatibility starting with Swift 3.0 and up. This means that in theory you should be able to recompile a Swift 3 code with the Swift 4 compiler.
There's some nuance to the definition of source code compatibility:
> The Swift 4 compiler will include a language compatibility flag -swift-version that accepts 3 or 4 as arguments and controls the compatibility mode (SR- 2582 " rel="nofollow">https://bugs.swift.org/browse/SR-2582>).
> The -swift-version 3 compatibility mode has the goal of source compatibility as much as practically possible with Swift 3.x (including 3, 3.0.x, 3.x).
> The -swift-version 4 compatibility allows approved source code breakages from Swift 3.x (including 3, 3.0.x, 3.x).
https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo...
TL;DR: there may be breaking source changes between Swift 3 and Swift 4, but the Swift 4 compiler will still be capable of compiling Swift 3 code. There's no indication whether the Swift 5 compiler will still be able to compile Swift 3 code, so you'll likely still have to migrate your codebase within a year or two.