Speaker here — I’m responsible for the slides and the flower shirt. Happy to answer questions.
From where you stand currently, what do you feel are the greatest challenges lying ahead on the road to making this viable for production use?
Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
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Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#12Swift has all the things I want in a language - Strong Typing - Great Performance - Actor Model Concurrency [0] - Modern Ergonomics - Corporate Backing - Performance - Functional Style - LLMs perform well with it [1] - Usable across iOS, Android, Web, and Browsers [2][3] The only thing its missing is adoption outside of the iOS space. I'm not sure it will be able to make that leap, but the ingredients are there. If i…
You listed “corporate backing” as a good thing and “no adoption outside Apple ecosystem” as a pain point. Why would it get adopted outside Apple ecosystem if Apple decides what happens to it?
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#13Speaker here — I’m responsible for the slides and the flower shirt. Happy to answer questions.
From where you stand currently, what do you feel are the greatest challenges lying ahead on the road to making this viable for production use?
I think the balancing act of code size (how fat your WASM binary will be) and DX/comfort in Swift is tricky.
Just as an example: JSON data - Including a Swift serializer adds code size, but bridging to JS is a bit less comfortable. And for each similar feature we will need to find a good compromise. We need to be careful not to create a "parallel universe" of Swift, where everything works completely differently from "normal Swift" - but at the same time things like 'import Foundation' won't fly on the web.
And, of course, things like HMR or "module splitting" and other more dynamic features are much, much tougher to do with a compiled language and Wasm. So, trying to reach "DX-parity" with JS frameworks can be a very pricy endeavor.
I think Swift adoption in general is also a ... factor. I personally think it is way more ergonomic to write than most languages, especially for UI and app-level stuff, while bringing a lot to the table. But as - we all know - it is still hasn't grown to its potential outside of Apple-land.
Embedded Swift is a moving target, but I am confident it delivers (it's evolving rapidly). Also, Wasm is a moving target to a degree.
And then there is just a ton to do, none of which a "great challenge", but just the grind of moving towards a "fully-featured UI framework"...
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#14Swift has all the things I want in a language - Strong Typing - Great Performance - Actor Model Concurrency [0] - Modern Ergonomics - Corporate Backing - Performance - Functional Style - LLMs perform well with it [1] - Usable across iOS, Android, Web, and Browsers [2][3] The only thing its missing is adoption outside of the iOS space. I'm not sure it will be able to make that leap, but the ingredients are there. If i…
Xcode isn't modern ergonomics, and neither is slow compilation (which also doubles against great performance and doubled performance)
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not necessary to use all or even most of those features, though, and so a nice balance of expressiveness and functionality is possible. I’ll take it over dying on weird hills in language design in pursuit of ideological purity or mountains of ceremonial code and unavoidably ugly syntax.
> mountains of ceremonial code and unavoidably ugly syntax. you... just described Swift, really :) Also, all those features exist even if you don't use them all. Which makes the language complex, cumbersome, and makes its compiler slow, complex and brittle. A language shouldn't be a collection of one-off edge cases, and this has nothing to do with ideological purity
I agree the language itself has gotten more complex, but for day-to-day productivity in terms of actually using it to write code, I don't think it makes a difference.
I've found writing Swift code very pleasant, but I've been doing it for ten years, so that helps I suppose. The biggest productivity impact for day-to-day use for me in the last few years has been the new concurrency model.
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#16Swift has all the things I want in a language - Strong Typing - Great Performance - Actor Model Concurrency [0] - Modern Ergonomics - Corporate Backing - Performance - Functional Style - LLMs perform well with it [1] - Usable across iOS, Android, Web, and Browsers [2][3] The only thing its missing is adoption outside of the iOS space. I'm not sure it will be able to make that leap, but the ingredients are there. If i…
Xcode isn't modern ergonomics, and neither is slow compilation (which also doubles against great performance and doubled performance)
Xcode is also definitely absolutely not required for using Swift.