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IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

computerworld.com

41–50 of 235 posts

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#41
post #31
post #21

I cannot take this seriously. Even minor versions of Swift have breaking language changes and depredations. That tells me precisely it is too early for the enterprise.

That sounds like every enterprise application I've ever used – if you make money selling support and consulting, churn is awesome!

That explains "enterprise ready" then. :)

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#42
post #22

Hilarious that IBM still thinks of the enterprise as the arbiter of quality. Consumer is now setting the defacto standards, including on things like information security. IBM's days of having a voice in that conversation are probably more limited than they realize.

IBM have had some high-profile stuff-ups in Australia. Good luck to them being taken seriously over here with almost anything they say nowadays.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#43
post #20

So... what's the "elevator pitch" for Swift? It has anything interesting over Elixir or Go (well, go's feature is "lack of feature" but you know what I mean) or Scala or Kotlin? I know that iOS and MacOS desperately needed a modern language, and great for them that they have it now, but does the rest of the world need it?

I think the pitch is that despite static typing, it offers a lot of multi-paradigm high-level features while remaining elegant with fairly minimal syntax compared to other native static languages like Rust or C++. It automatically manages memory but without a stop-the-world garbage collector and goes a long way to opening a lot of flexible design options to any developer: it has great support for generic programming,…

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Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#44
When I recently interviewed at Apple I was told my position would primarily be coding in Java, but the team would be open to other languages as the project progressed and needs changed. I asked if they would consider Swift. Then was told that Swift wasn't production ready in their eyes.

(I didn't get the job)

I guess every team is different, but this attitude to dog fooding isn't great.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#45
post #10

I literally just started to go back and re-learn some of the core concepts for the latest version... wow is Swift ugly! EDIT: I'm not attempting to discredit the greatness that can be had... Just wanted to describe a feeling which I had while using it is all!

It's a systems language, and imo way more beautiful than c++.

Yeah but it can't replace C++. Swift was designed to make programming fun/nice not to replace C or C++.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#46
post #2

IBM says: we are ready to start making money by adding another buzzy technology and using it to provide shitware.

why weren't they ready before, according to you?

Only because it took them a while to hire/train people sufficiently to be able to sell Swift. This has nothing to do with Swift itself, my point is IBM's bullshit should be ignored.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#47
I love all these zippy marketing keywords: "digital transformation" and "digital experiences". IBM is trying hard to get developer attention. They have a hard battle ahead of them to compete against AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. That's what this really all comes down to, pushing their hosting services.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#48
post #25
post #21

I cannot take this seriously. Even minor versions of Swift have breaking language changes and depredations. That tells me precisely it is too early for the enterprise.

"Enterprise" uses nodejs just fine... probably this is what gave IBM the idea to even try :)

Any breaking changes in the JavaScript language in the last .. . 10 years or more ?

On the other hand Swift had quite a few breaking changes in 2016.

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#49
post #38
post #20

So... what's the "elevator pitch" for Swift? It has anything interesting over Elixir or Go (well, go's feature is "lack of feature" but you know what I mean) or Scala or Kotlin? I know that iOS and MacOS desperately needed a modern language, and great for them that they have it now, but does the rest of the world need it?

1. Inferred static nominal typing with generics 2. 1st class support for Optionals 3. Support for Structs and Classes 4. Native binary & scripting mode 5. Automatic reference counting (instead of garbage collection) 6. Large standard library 7. Large corporate backer (Apple) 8. Open source 9. Good C, C++, & Obj-C interoperability 10. Decently fast ( https://medium.com/@qutheory/server-side-swift-vs-the-other-... )

Non C++ interop yet

Re: IBM says Swift is ready for the enterprise

#50
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you car to give some exampled ? My opinion is that the enterprise is a somewhat separate ecosystem. Thus "enterprise-ready" -ready is not a mark of quality, it's a mark of belonging to the enterprise ecosystem.

I'm wondering what makes swift ready for the enterprise ecosystem. It barely seems to meet the requirements of the "enthusiastic consumer" outside of Apple OS.

To be ready for the enterprise ecosystem basically means that you can sue someone if things go wrong, and you can buy support packages for enormous sums of money. IBM is saying that you can 1) buy bluemix swift from them, and 2) sue them if anything goes wrong - but since they have a great legal team, they probably got ironclad agreements ready to go.
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