241–250 of 308 posts
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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.
> . It is hard to think that any Windows programmer would prefer Swift as a language over .NET languages, as many commenters pointed out on Reddit, but a port of Swift UI on Windows could be a game changer. Everybody would jump to Swift [for new projects] if it meant a cross-platform GUI framework.
Creating a good cross-platform GUI framework is probably harder than creating a good cross-platform language.
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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…
1. Native feeling, but sufficiently inflexible that only very simple, common UI patterns can be implemented
2. An “uncanny valley” native ui, where things are almost native but often feel wrong in subtle ways
I think that’s why Electron has succeeded where so many cross platform UI frameworks failed: it’s so obviously not native that it doesn’t fall into that “uncanny valley” anymore
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OK then: - Slow compilation, I think even now immutably concatenating a handful of strings makes the compile time exponential. - Over reliance on keywords and special case syntax, magic doesn't compose. A bunch of it just supports Optional for example. - Xcode, nuff said. - Equatable and Hashable for tuples were implemented with invisible compiler magic, so they wouldn't work with generics. - Variance is hot garbage,…
Sounds like you describe the state of Swift at least three years ago. SourceKit just doesn't crash anymore on me anymore, ever. Compile times are quite good for me nowadays, still not as fast as Objective-C but then again you don't get compile time guarantees for free.
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Swift wasn't originally open-source, either.
Not only did they announce that it would be open source immediately, unlike the source code dump they did with WebKit, Apple made the entire git commit history public from the initial commit.
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That is the thing I dont like about the current Apple. They used to release things where you see they put a lot of thoughts into it. Now they are half baked. This isn't so much a problem on Apps ( The Product ) where it is constantly being updated and tweaked. But with code you have the hassle to try and keep up. And the pace of improvement is very very slow. To put things into perspective, Swift UI has been developm…
> But somehow after nearly 6 years Objective-C stills feels better This experience is shared by basically nobody? I used to love Objective-C, which was unusual even before Swift, but I would not in a million years switch back to using it. Swift is so much better in every single way.
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What would it provide that Qt + QML don't right now? (if we assume that the crossplatform GUI is the killer feature)
Hate to say it, but the sanest thing to do if you need a cross platform UI is use Java. Your other choice is Electron, which is way slower and uses many times as much ram
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The official Apple tutorial gives you an idea what they were going for, but in practice it’s nowhere near that smooth. In fact, most of the time I found myself staring at a “type too complex, add annotation” error. That one doesn’t actually mean your type is too complex, it just means you’re passing the wrong thing somewhere and instead of a useful error message the compiler just gave up and broke.
Errors in SwiftUI are significantly better in the recently released Swift 5.2, so this is clearly something they’re working on.
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Swift wasn't originally open-source, either.
Not only did they announce that it would be open source immediately, unlike the source code dump they did with WebKit, Apple made the entire git commit history public from the initial commit.
Dr. Dobb's had an article in 2014 [2] which said "Swift is proprietary and closed: It is entirely controlled by Apple and there is no open source implementation."
EDIT: I found a HN post from 2015, just over a year after Swift was released, titled "Swift will be open source later this year" [3]. Not immediate at all.
[1]: https://asciiwwdc.com/2014/sessions/101 [2]: http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/swift-objecti... [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9680982
XCode (and hence most of the useful parts of using the Apple development ecosystem) as of v11.4 won't install on Macs running Mojave it's actually better, in my view, to use Mono/C# and things like Xamarin than start off with Swift and think you can port the other way and not be forced into upgrading your laptop for the privilege of writing apps for Apple systems.
There are other editors for Swift out there, like AppCode. I do hate the fact that I'm forced to upgrade to a new OS version somewhere within half a year. Cataline was barely tolerable when I had to jump to it.