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Swift is a more convenient Rust

blog.namangoel.com

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Re: Swift is a more convenient Rust

#21

Post by x3ro »

arghwhat wrote: post #14
robjwells wrote: post #12

One way that Swift is certainly not more convenient than Rust is the tooling. I use a 2018 MacBook Air, using macOS 12, which is now unsupported by Xcode. Meanwhile SourceKit-LSP is treated as very much a second-class citizen. But Rust 1.81 and rust-analyzer build and run just fine.

Not to praise Swift, but Swift and Xcode are unrelated projects. Saying that Swift is inconvenient because of Xcode issues is like saying C++/C# is inconvenient because of Visual Studio. You can install Swift on Linux if you want and code away, just like with Rust - but as it hasn't really caught on for anything other than building apps for the Apple ecosystem, it's not a particularly normal thing to do.

The defacto standard matters. The vast majority of Swift programmers will be using Xcode, and I definitely immediately think of the pains I've had with Xcode when I hear Swift. For example, I don't know of any other good IDE environment for Swift, though maybe there is one.

You could also argue that e.g. Rust is not cargo, but almost every Rust programmer will be using cargo. Sure I could use something else, but why would I? Of course the analogy is not perfect, because the "why would I?" is clear for Xcode: it's bad and macOS only :D

All I'm trying to say is: defaults matter. Most people will not be writing Swift in VS Code (on macOS).

Re: Swift is a more convenient Rust

#22

Post by swiftcoder »

seanalltogether wrote: post #16

I keep trying to get into rust but I always hit a brick wall when looking at examples and the code looks so complicated. Examples like this straight from the rust website just make my eyes glaze over struct Task { future: Mutex >>, task_sender: SyncSender >, }

I'll grant you that is probably too complicated an example to appear early in the docs, but how often are you actually building multithreaded job dispatch systems from scratch (which appears to be what this example is doing), and how simple would it be in other languages?

Re: Swift is a more convenient Rust

#23

Post by acar_rag »

yunohn wrote: post #17
arghwhat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to praise Swift, but Swift and Xcode are unrelated projects. Saying that Swift is inconvenient because of Xcode issues is like saying C++/C# is inconvenient because of Visual Studio. You can install Swift on Linux if you want and code away, just like with Rust - but as it hasn't really caught on for anything other than building apps for the Apple ecosystem, it's not a particularly normal thing to do.

I’m pretty sure you need Xcode to compile Swift on macOS.

Absolutely not, you just need to use swiftc: https://theswiftdev.com/the-swift-compiler-for-beginners/

Re: Swift is a more convenient Rust

#24

Post by arghwhat »

noelwelsh wrote: post #13

Hmmm...I disagree with a number of statements in the post but I think the following two hypotheses will make for more interesting discussion than some nitpicks: 1. A large part of why many people love Rust is that it's the first time they've used an ML family language. One of the innovations of Rust was to create a community that felt like home to Unix hackers who weren't programming language nerds. 2. Rust is the fi…

> Rust is the first language to bring non-GC automatic memory management to the mainstream

To nitpick, the first language to bring non-GC automatic memory management to the mainstream would be either Forth or C through stack memory.

For heaps, we have reference counting, often handled automatically through the stack (e.g., C++ smart pointers).

The thing Rust brought to mainstream is not automatic memory management - they're a dime a dozen with and without GC. It's an ownership model that is strict about whether you have read or write access within the type system. At the same time, this is also where most developer friction stems from, as it's quite unique, and you're often faced with a trade-off between explaining exactly what you want at compile-time at higher design cost, or bailing out more to runtime checks with e.g. RefCell while getting fewer guarantees about code correctness from the compiler.

Re: Swift is a more convenient Rust

#27

Post by est31 »

noelwelsh wrote: post #13

Hmmm...I disagree with a number of statements in the post but I think the following two hypotheses will make for more interesting discussion than some nitpicks: 1. A large part of why many people love Rust is that it's the first time they've used an ML family language. One of the innovations of Rust was to create a community that felt like home to Unix hackers who weren't programming language nerds. 2. Rust is the fi…

> Rust is the first language to bring non-GC automatic memory management to the mainstream. It won't be the last and it might well be the worst. Other languages in this space include Swift

Rust's memory management is not automatic, you have to explicitly manage memory. It's just made extremely easy for you by the language thanks to stuff like RAII, and there is checks that prevent memory safety violations like double free. But those checks won't prevent leaks, although the many lints do make it harder to forget about a value.

Also, Swift's refcounting can be seen as a form of gc.

Re: Swift is a more convenient Rust

#28

Post by robjwells »

yunohn wrote: post #17
arghwhat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to praise Swift, but Swift and Xcode are unrelated projects. Saying that Swift is inconvenient because of Xcode issues is like saying C++/C# is inconvenient because of Visual Studio. You can install Swift on Linux if you want and code away, just like with Rust - but as it hasn't really caught on for anything other than building apps for the Apple ecosystem, it's not a particularly normal thing to do.

I’m pretty sure you need Xcode to compile Swift on macOS.

You can install a Swift toolchain on macOS without Xcode, but Xcode is the “blessed” route and listed first on the swift.org getting started instructions. https://www.swift.org/install/macos

However, it can be a bumpy ride. For example: “swift test” (via the CLI) doesn’t work if Xcode is not installed. https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-package-manager/issues/43...

I would just emphasise that the OP was about _convenience_ and Swift-without-Xcode on macOS is not smooth sailing.

Re: Swift is a more convenient Rust

#29

Post by neonsunset »

lukeh wrote: post #11

I don’t know Rust, but I’m loving Swift for systems programming. Most recent project was an 802.1Q SRP implementation and I couldn’t imagine going back to C. Higher up the stack, I’ve also used it with a custom runner to build the business logic for an embedded Flutter app. My only beef is that the binaries are quite large. I’m hoping the new Foundation will improve things, in the interim I’m trying to eliminate my F…

You can get much smaller native binaries with .NET's NativeAOT nowadays: https://github.com/MichalStrehovsky/sizegame

Funnily enough, I'm using C# to solve quite a similar type of tasks. It's a really pleasant experience.

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