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Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

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Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#231

Post by raincole »

uhura wrote: post #36

I believe that this long game of Swift being "good for everything" but "better for Apple platforms" will be detrimental to the language. This does not help the language nor seems to bring more people to the ecosystem. Competitors seems to have a combination of: - Being more open-source - Have more contributors - Have a narrower scope Maybe they should consider open sourcing all the tooling (like Xcode) otherwise the…

Whatever Apple's goal is being, the result is written on the wall: Swift's brand is strongly associated to Apple ecosystem for most programmers. They won't adopt it unless they're already targeting Apple's platforms.

See C#/.Net Core. It runs on Linux for so many years. But people still treat it as "Microsoft's thing".

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#232

Post by tempodox »

threeseed wrote: post #145
kelnos wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can run the latest version of my OS of choice on hardware twice that old. This is only a problem that Apple has created to help them sell hardware. These days, a 6-year-old laptop is still a perfectly capable machine.

And it is still a perfectly capable machine. But you can't expect Apple to support it as a development platform. Especially when they want you to use the latest SDKs which only work on newer machines.

You're moving the goal posts. I'm not interested in SDKs that cannot work on a given OS or CPU, I just want to update the compiler to make use of progress in the language, without being forced by Apple to buy new hardware for that, or install a different OS. You pretending these things cannot be separated looks deeply disingenuous.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#233

Post by zoot64 »

pmarreck wrote: post #214
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience for a long time. Swift is nice but why would I waste my time working on a language that is too tied to the Apple platform even if it's open-source when we have more universal scripting languages like Python, or languages like Kotlin that are compiled but have more support (because I trust JetBrains way more than Apple at the moment), or languages that are most strict like Rust but have mor…

Python is not compiled, it is interpreted, and it has many warts. Kotlin depends on the JVM and is also not compiled. Rust? Now you're talking. Except that it has warts, too.

Kotlin is compiled in the sense that it compiles down to bytecode read by the JVM. It's not machine code level but it is still compiled to a certain degree. And Kotlin can compile natively for multiple targets including macOS and iOS without need for the JVM. There's also WASM support too.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#234

Post by pjmlp »

jayd16 wrote: post #208
fastball wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language are you using to develop native apps for macOS and iOS and visionOS and watchOS, since Swift is dying?

C#, Unity.

Which rely on a mix of Objective-C and Swift APIs to actually interact with the platform.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#235

Post by pjmlp »

talldayo wrote: post #203
MBCook wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The perfect way to draw companies to embrace open source.

They don't embrace Open Source, that's the problem. I don't even have to invoke the Halloween Documents to erode faith in FAANG as an Open Source steward, half this thread retched at the idea of using Swift out of principle. Apple is welcome to head down the same road they're going if they think it's working out for Swift. Developers aren't going to magically warm to it any more than they trusted C# unless Apple make…

Just like any other big corps, for every big corp you might think of, I can provide an anti-Open Source example from one of their business units.

Lets play this game?

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#236

Post by pjmlp »

makeitdouble wrote: post #150
thih9 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would I waste my time working on a language that is too tied to the Apple platform This might work the other way round: starting from people familiar with macos or ios development who want to write for other platforms. Then the question becomes: why would a developer learn a different open source language when they can use what they already know. And sure, depending on the context they might still go with Pytho…

That crowd has the disadvantage of not being primarily interested in the other platforms, so they won't be much invested in optimizing or better matching the target capabilities. That's the same dynamic as web devs writing React Native apps: you won't expect them to contribute extensions that manipulate local apfs metadata for instance. So while it's nice to have them use the tools, you still need people who primaril…

That crowd needs other platforms when using servers, as Apple has moved itself out of the server market, so at very least BSD/Linux workloads.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#237

Post by pjmlp »

hu3 wrote: post #125
thih9 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would I waste my time working on a language that is too tied to the Apple platform This might work the other way round: starting from people familiar with macos or ios development who want to write for other platforms. Then the question becomes: why would a developer learn a different open source language when they can use what they already know. And sure, depending on the context they might still go with Pytho…

> people familiar with macos or ios development who want to write for other platforms. This is a rather small userbase when it comes to enterprise. Especially because Swift will never be as versatile as Python or as efficient as Rust. And then there's also Go, C# and Kotlin with much better tooling.

Since Apple has moved themselves out of the server market, folks need to at least be able to target BSD/Linux server workloads, and naturally using Swift as well instead of another language is a desired option.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#238

Post by pjmlp »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #63
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience for a long time. Swift is nice but why would I waste my time working on a language that is too tied to the Apple platform even if it's open-source when we have more universal scripting languages like Python, or languages like Kotlin that are compiled but have more support (because I trust JetBrains way more than Apple at the moment), or languages that are most strict like Rust but have mor…

Can only speak for myself, but I’d love to be able to use Swift elsewhere so I don’t need to drag around a JVM and all the things that come with it (Kotlin) or have to wrestle with Rust’s sematics and disinclination towards old style imperative desktop UI development. Swift isn't perfect of course, but it’s the closest I’ve come to a language feeling “comfy”.

You mean like the huge ecosystem of libraries for almost anything one can thing of, and IDE tooling, with 30 years of experience in production?

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#239

Post by easeout »

bluepizza wrote: post #207
easeout wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, right? https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-foundation

Which was not open source from the start?

Foundation wasn't made to be part of the Swift project until recently. 25 years ago it was the "foundation" of Cocoa, the Mac OS X API derived from NEXTSTEP. It was an Apple platform thing explicitly—now it is remade in Swift and is part of the Swift project.

Re: Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

#240

Post by sgt »

gruuuk wrote: post #157
jitl wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this reaction. Apple: here, we're open-sourcing this previously closed-source Apple-specific thing that made Swift better on Apple platforms. We're moving the Apple stuff into a plugin so Windows and Linux can be equal peers to Apple in the new system. We've implemented preliminary support for Windows & Linux and plan to continue work to bring them up to parity. Hacker News: I believe that this long game…

They should have been fully open source with full linux support and parity since day one. That would actually help the language get traction. At this point it's a dying language.

There's a lot more buzz and activity around Swift than many other languages. It's literally up there with Rust, in terms of excitement (perhaps not quite as high). But I think if they get excitement outside of the Apple ecosystem, things should start to get super interesting.

Some are already adopting it like Ladybird browser.

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