Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption

Post by antonvs » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 7:05 AM UTC

zadikian wrote: post #159

josephg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh? They tried rust? Lots of people seem really committed to OOP. Rust is definitely a bad fit if you can't imagine writing code without classes and objects. I don't think this makes rust is a bad language for the problem. Its just, perhaps, makes rust a bad language for some programmers.

It doesn't seem uncommon for someone to generally like Rust but still want to use something OO for UI. I'm in that boat. Never liked OOP much, but it makes sense sometimes.

    trait Widget {
        fn layout(&mut self, constraints: Constraints);
        fn paint(&self, ctx: &mut PaintCtx);
        fn handle_event(&mut self, event: Event);
    }

    struct Button { ... }
    struct Label { ... }

    impl Widget for Button { ... }
    impl Widget for Label { ... }

    let mut widgets: Vec> = Vec::new();

    fn paint_if_visible(widget: &W, ctx: &mut PaintCtx)
    where
        W: HasBounds + HasVisibility,
    {
        if widget.is_visible() {
            ctx.paint_rect(widget.bounds());
        }
    }

Post by sparky4pro » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 7:18 AM UTC

meisel wrote: post #46

Why did Ladybird even attempt this with Swift, but (I presume) not with Rust? If they're going to go to the trouble of adding another language, does Rust not have a better history of C++ interop? Not to mention, Swift's GC doesn't seem great for the browser's performance.

Post by mvdtnz » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 7:42 AM UTC

fingerlocks wrote: post #206

VerifiedReports wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started using it around 2018. After being reasonably conversant in Objective-C, I fully adopted Swift for a new iOS app and thought it was a big improvement. But there's a lot of hokey, amateurish stuff in there... with more added all the time. Let's start with the arbitrary "structs are passed by value, classes by reference." And along with that: "Prefer structs over classes." But then: "Have one source of truth."…

Nowhere does it say structs provide “one source of truth”. It says the opposite actually- that classes are to be used when unique instances are required. All classes have a unique ID, which is simply it’s virtual memory address. Structs by contrast get memcpy’d left and right and have no uniqueness. You can also look at the source code for the language if any it’s confusing. It’s very readable.

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 7:52 AM UTC

elcritch wrote: post #110

meisel wrote: post #46

Why did Ladybird even attempt this with Swift, but (I presume) not with Rust? If they're going to go to the trouble of adding another language, does Rust not have a better history of C++ interop? Not to mention, Swift's GC doesn't seem great for the browser's performance.

Also I believe one of the core LadyBird devs was an ex Apple employee on WebKit which has been using Swift as well.

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 8:00 AM UTC

pbohun wrote: post #77

pbohun wrote: post #43

There's no way to say this without sounding mean: Everything Chris Lattner has done has been a "successful mess". He's obviously smart, but a horrible engineer. No one should allow him to design anything. Edit: I explained my position better below.

People are correct I didn't explain my position. LLVM: Pretty much everyone who has created a programming language with it has complained about its design. gingerbill, Jon Blow, and Andrew Kelley have all complained about it. LLVM is a good idea, but it that idea was executed better by Ken Thompson with his C compiler for Plan 9, and then again with his Go compiler design. Ken decided to create his own "architecture…