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Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

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Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#221

Post by jabl »

pjmlp wrote: post #214
jabl wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to have a modern statically typed language with type inferencing etc. that can be used for scripting, working in a REPL, as well as compiling to native code. I've never tried Swift, but it seems it could have all the required features. I guess it's just lacking a lot of libraries that work on Linux.

OCaml fits the bill.

Yeah, or Haskell.

But those have been out there in a more or less mature form for decades, with no major uptake in sight. I guess they're just too esoteric for them to reach critical mass. So here I am, stuck with bash/python/C, and dabbling a bit with Rust..

Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#223

Post by jmull »

sime2009 wrote: post #134

But why? Sure, there are people who want to tinker with it for fun, but outside of that what is the point in having Swift on Linux and Windows? You can't use it to build mac or iOS apps on Linux because the important libraries aren't there. There is no cross platform UI and Apple isn't likely to port and support theirs from macOS. If you are into servers then you have plenty of better languages options with establish…

> But why?

This is basic foundation building. It's true there aren't too many good use-cases for Swift on Windows or Linux now. But that can't really start to change until Swift has decent support for Windows and Linux.

Of course, it will take a lot more than this for Swift to catch on outside of its home territory. This is just one necessary step.

More broadly, I think we're still in the middle of the language wars, where the limitations of the historically dominant languages (like C, C++, Java, Javascript) have created openings for one or more newer languages. I think Apple and other Swift proponents would like Swift to become one of those newer established languages and take steps like these to at least keep it in the running.

Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#224

Post by blauditore »

jbverschoor wrote: post #158
ElFitz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fully fledged programming language. An open-source programming language, at that, with a lot of community input and involvement. Not a macOS or iOS app creation DSL. It's also quite pleasant to use, and has already seen a few uses beyond macOS and iOS apps, including some backend development (Vapor, Kitura, SwiftNIO, probably others). So you could use it to write command line tools. To write Linux or Windows a…

I'd say swift is currently probably the best languages out there. Language features, standard library, performance, memory management.

I'm curious, how do people judge this?

Personally I have some significant experience with maybe 5 different languages, which is already more diverse than the average software dev as far as I know. But I still wouldn't be comfortable to judge something like this.

For instance, I haven't worked with Swift, but I find it hard to believe it's much better than, say, C#, Scala, or Typescript, regarding those metrics. Do you have experience in those languages?

Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#225

Post by m3kw9 »

veidr wrote: post #186
ashtonkem wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a good cross-platform GUI framework is probably harder than creating a good cross-platform language.

Creating a good cross-platform GUI framework is probably harder than creating a good cross-platform language. Way way way way way harder, I'd think. It's basically never been done in the modern era. All the successful ones from the past look (and work) like garbage on a modern desktop computer (I use gnucash for my dad's business, ha ha). SwiftUI is an interesting re-think, though, and as a Windows 10 user, I can tel…

I’m interested in why you’d pick green potato’s

Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#226

Post by dev_tty01 »

ksec wrote: post #219
zapzupnz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple also isn't dogfooding much with Swift. That's because it didn't have a stable ABI until Swift 5, released last year. Now that it does, a lot of their iOS/iPadOS apps have been rewritten, at least partially but sometimes fully, in Swift; this includes some of their Catalyst apps on Mojave and Catalina. The only app I know for sure to be fully written in Swift, thus far, is the Apple Developer app (previously c…

>I must have missed this. Where did you hear this? I'd love to see more info about that. Chris Lattner said in one of the pod cast, I think it was Accidental Tech, where Swift UI started before he left Apple. Since that was 3.5 years ago, Swift must have been close to 4 years of work.

Well, that may be, but we don't know when a concerted effort began. Just a guess, but this was probably a small team (or individual) trying some things out as an R&D project to see if it had legs. At some point there was enough promise so that the company put serious effort into it. That might have been 2 or 3 years ago. At any rate, it has company focus now.

Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#227

Post by NateEag »

egeozcan wrote: post #180
chadcmulligan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electron ends up being the technology of choice for so many desktop apps. probably because of the large number of JS only developers.

JavaScript is a language that's neither abstracted from the basic programming concepts nor its syntax is alien. Most of the people who picked it up can learn many other mainstream programming languages in a week, if not a weekend. Add 1-2 more weeks and they're writing GUI code. Yet, they don't. JavaScript is popular for pragmatic reasons (a.k.a. "it delivers results"), so is PHP. They aren't the best languages, but…

So much this.

I work primarily in JS and PHP.

They are both deeply, deeply flawed (though I have learned to love JS's good parts, while I still hate PHP).

I have programmed in many languages - Java, Python, Scheme, and Bash are all ones I've worked in professionally, and I've spent plenty of time in Emacs Lisp. This doesn't touch on the ones I've tinkered with for fun.

JS and PHP are not the best languages, but they work, they're everywhere, and they're usually what your client already has in place.

Changing languages rarely delivers any actual business or end user value.

So, I work in what the client has.

JS will long outlast PHP, because it's such a massively deployed language and browsers can effectively never remove support for it.

PHP may slowly die out, since it's strictly on the backend, where you can choose your language.

JS is eternal.

Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#228

Post by vlozko »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #122
gman83 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true wouldn't we be seeing a big increase in Dart adoption because of Flutter as well? I'm not seeing it.

Swift is already way more popular than dart though. But Swift doesn't run on Android, does it?

It does. It has been able to for some time now. A team I’ve worked with used it to build a cross-platform library. Swift wasn’t the first choice but the short story was they didn’t choose C++ because they didn’t want to hire C++ devs to maintain it.

Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#229

Post by DeusExMachina »

veidr wrote: post #186
ashtonkem wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a good cross-platform GUI framework is probably harder than creating a good cross-platform language.

Creating a good cross-platform GUI framework is probably harder than creating a good cross-platform language. Way way way way way harder, I'd think. It's basically never been done in the modern era. All the successful ones from the past look (and work) like garbage on a modern desktop computer (I use gnucash for my dad's business, ha ha). SwiftUI is an interesting re-think, though, and as a Windows 10 user, I can tel…

I think the opportunity is particularly on how SwiftUI has been implemented in iOS, iPadOS and macOS, by relying on the native UI of each platform and providing a common abstraction for developers.

Instead of providing the same UI that works badly on every device, SwiftUI interprets each concept differently according to the platform.

For example, a Toggle in an iOS and iPadOS app looks like a on/off switch, while on macOS it's rendered as a checkbox. A Picker has is scrolling wheel on iOS but it's shown as radio boxes or a drop-down menu on macOS.

Navigation is also the same. On iOS, a NavigationView offers the drill-down navigation common to iPhone apps, while on macOS it creates a split master-detail interface.

Each implementation does so by using the native UI framework of each platform under the hood, UIKit on iOS, and AppKit on macOS. I don't know how UI development works on Windows, but my speculation is that a SwiftUI implementation would work the same way.

Re: Swift 5.3 Will Be Supported on Windows and Additional Linux Distributions

#230

Post by foldr »

viraptor wrote: post #133
quantummkv wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A modern, powerful memory safe language? C++ is hardly a good choice for making casual small GUI apps.

Like Crystal, Go and Rust? (and QML for the basic events handling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_bindings_for_...

Have you made any non-trivial use of the Qt bindings for those languages? Qt is a big and complex library, and most bindings are incomplete or poorly documented. As far as I know, PyQt is the only Qt binding is the only one that you can really rely on to work now and in the future.
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