IBM Stops Server Side Swift Framework Development

Post by Apocryphon » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

wwright wrote: post #8

thrower123 wrote: post #7

Outside of iOS, is there really any traction for Swift development? It certainly feels like it is settling into an also-ran position. And really, mobile apps are turning out to be a dead-end, and people don't seem to be actually investing in native clients anymore, they just slap their website in a browser control.

As an Apple fan and a programming language nerd, I have basically no interest in ever using the language. I spend a lot of time in C++, Haskell, Rust, and Kubernetes, but Swift just feels pointlessly complicated to me. (C++ I think is also pointlessly complicated, but the rest at least have a point ;-)

Post by verttii » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

tannernelson wrote: post #18

jrs95 wrote: post #12

Apple really ought to invest more in server side Swift directly themselves. I feel like it has a lot of potential, and what the community has done with limited resources is impressive, but it's not really going to be able to gain substantial traction without a lot more weight behind it imo

These things take time. A lot of people at Apple are heavily invested in Swift on the server, including the Swift core team: https://swift.org/server/ Swift itself still needs time to mature, too. Things like the memory model, async/await, generics, etc. The future is bright, it will just require some patience to get there.

Post by thosakwe » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:34 AM UTC

sansnomme wrote: post #25

mythz wrote: post #17

Pretty clear signal that there's low appetite for full stack development in Swift. What are other promising future "end-to-end" (i.e. Web / Server / Mobile) development platforms are there? IMO these are the main contenders: - JS / node.js / React Native (Android/iOS) (+ other transpile 2 JS langs, e.g. TypeScript, Clojure, Scala, OCaml, etc) - Kotlin to JavaScript / JVM / Android / Kotlin Native (iOS) - C# Blazor /…

Dart, if you consider Flutter an alternative to JS.

Post by mhd » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

mythz wrote: post #24

nicoburns wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are actually already building stuff in Rust / The frontend frameworks in Rust are surprisingly good, and I wouldn't be too surprised if this becomes a mainstream option at some point. That said, I generally find there isn't all that much advantage to sharing a frontend and backend language.

Yeah they're mentions because it's being done in small niches (there's also Ruby/Haxe + many other transpile to JS languages), I just think they'll always lag behind the other popular and well supported contenders listed. I could be wrong but that's my impression after having worked on all of them which all provide decent development development experiences and end results - though they vary in strength amongst the d…

Post by thosakwe » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:55 AM UTC

mhd wrote: post #37

mythz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they're mentions because it's being done in small niches (there's also Ruby/Haxe + many other transpile to JS languages), I just think they'll always lag behind the other popular and well supported contenders listed. I could be wrong but that's my impression after having worked on all of them which all provide decent development development experiences and end results - though they vary in strength amongst the d…

So you list Dart as being well supported on the server side? Did I miss some killer app/framework recently?