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Swift 6.3

swift.org

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Re: Swift 6.3

#91

Post by myHNAccount123 »

zarzavat wrote: post #20
frizlab wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? I can indeed target every layer of the software stack using Swift, today . E.g. ClearSurgery[0] is written fully in Swift, including the real-time components running on the Linux boxes. [0] https://clearsurgery.vision

I don't know why anyone would want to use Apple tools if they are not developing for Apple platforms. Apple barely maintains compatibility for their own platforms, using Swift on a non-Apple platform is setting yourself up for doubule pain.

> Apple barely maintains compatibility for their own platforms...

You're commenting on a post about an update... that they apparently don't do? What?

Re: Swift 6.3

#92

Post by WD-42 »

dzonga wrote: post #13

good to see incredible stuff being shipped in Swift. Haven't used it since v3 though. around 2015-17 - Swift could have easily dethroned Python. it was simple enough - very fast - could plug into the C/C++ ecosystem. Hence all the numeric stuff people were doing in Python powered by C++ libraries could've been done with Swift. the server ecosystem was starting to come to life, even supported by IBM. I think the letdo…

Dethroned Python? The Apple language, seriously. Where is numpy for swift?

Re: Swift 6.3

#93

Post by myHNAccount123 »

hu3 wrote: post #52
frizlab wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was true for Swift 2, maybe a little for Swift 3, but it has not been true since a long time now…

If cross platform support took so long, it's a major red flag. Plus Swift is arguably too unnecessarily complex now. And there's Rust/Zig so why use Swift for low level?

https://github.com/finagolfin/swift-android-sdk

At least 6 years old.

Re: Swift 6.3

#94

Post by CharlieDigital »

72deluxe wrote: post #35
iamcalledrob wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my read too. Swift was feeling pretty exciting around ~v3. It was small and easy to learn, felt modern, and had solid interop with ObjC/C++. ...but then absolutely exploded in complexity. New features and syntax thrown in make it feel like C++. 10 ways of doing the same thing. I wish they'd kept the language simple and lean, and wrapped additional complexity as optional packages. It just feels like such a smal…

I get this feeling with C#. I have been here since its release. I looked at Swift and then they moved very quickly at the beginning, so the book I had to teach me was out of date moments after it was printed. With all the complexity being thrown in, I stuck with C++ because at least it was only 1 language I had to keep track of (barely)!

C# is the other direction, IMO.

I've been using C# since the first release in 2003/4 timeline?

Aside from a few high profile language features like LINQ, generics, `async/await`, the syntax has grown, but the key additions have made the language simpler to use and more terse. Tuples and destructuring for example. Spread operators for collections. Switch expressions and pattern matching. These are mostly syntactic affordances.

You don't have to use any of them; you can write C# exactly as you wrote it in 2003...if you want to. But I'm not sure why one would forgo the improved terseness of modern C#.

Next big language addition will be discriminated unions and even that is really "opt-in" if you want to use it.

Re: Swift 6.3

#96

Post by willtemperley »

merlindru wrote: post #72
willtemperley wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which keywords would you get rid of and why? You don't have to use all of them!

i would get rid of associatedtype, borrowing, consuming, deinit, extension, fileprivate, init, inout, internal, nonisolated, open, operator, precedencegroup, protocol, rethrows, subscript, typealias, #available, #colorLiteral, #else, #elseif, #endif, #fileLiteral, #if, #imageLiteral, #keyPath, #selector, #sourceLocation, #unavailable, associativity, convenience, didSet, dynamic, indirect, infix, lazy, left, mutating,…

It's true that internal is pointless.

Focusing on the keywords rather than the macros, I think the rest of them have legitimate use cases, though they're often misused, especially fileprivate.

Re: Swift 6.3

#97

Post by groundzeros2015 »

troupo wrote: post #29
rasmus1610 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Chris Lattner leaving and creating Mojo also didn’t help in that regard. Swift for TensorFlow was a cool idea in that time …

Lattner probably left because Apple didn't give the team any breathing room to properly implement the language. It was "we must have this feature yesterday". A lot of Swift is the equivalent of Javascrip's "we have 10 days to implement and ship it": https://youtu.be/ovYbgbrQ-v8?si=tAko6n88PmpWrzvO&t=1400 --- start quote --- Swift has turned into a gigantic super complicated bag of special cases, special syntax, speci…

For this language to become default at Apple they had to be doing a massive amount of internal promotion - in other words they knew where it was going.

And then if that's the case, how were they not ready to solve the many problems that a big organization would run into? And all the schedule constraints that come with it?

Re: Swift 6.3

#98

Post by afavour »

dzonga wrote: post #13

good to see incredible stuff being shipped in Swift. Haven't used it since v3 though. around 2015-17 - Swift could have easily dethroned Python. it was simple enough - very fast - could plug into the C/C++ ecosystem. Hence all the numeric stuff people were doing in Python powered by C++ libraries could've been done with Swift. the server ecosystem was starting to come to life, even supported by IBM. I think the letdo…

Eh, I don't think Swift would ever have dethroned Python. What pain point would it practically solve? I don't use Python often but I don't hear folks complaining about it much.

I do, though, think Swift had/has(?) a chance to dethrone Rust in the non-garbage collected space. Rust is incredibly powerful but sometimes you don't really need that complexity, you just need something that can compile cross-platform and maintain great performance. Before now I've written Rust projects that heavily use Rc just so I don't have to spend forever thinking about lifetimes, when I do that I think "I wish I could just use Swift for this" sometimes.

You're right, though, that Swift remains Apple's language and they don't have a lot of interest in non-Apple uses of it (e.g. Swift SDK for Android was only released late last year). They're much happier to bend the language in weird ways to create things like SwiftUI.

Re: Swift 6.3

#99

Post by groundzeros2015 »

myHNAccount123 wrote: post #91
zarzavat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why anyone would want to use Apple tools if they are not developing for Apple platforms. Apple barely maintains compatibility for their own platforms, using Swift on a non-Apple platform is setting yourself up for doubule pain.

> Apple barely maintains compatibility for their own platforms... You're commenting on a post about an update... that they apparently don't do? What?

Why are you interpreting this comment as "never receives updates"? It takes great effort to maintain API compatibility, some things aren't improved or are implicitly deprecated.

Re: Swift 6.3

#100

Post by fainpul »

afavour wrote: post #98
dzonga wrote: post #13

good to see incredible stuff being shipped in Swift. Haven't used it since v3 though. around 2015-17 - Swift could have easily dethroned Python. it was simple enough - very fast - could plug into the C/C++ ecosystem. Hence all the numeric stuff people were doing in Python powered by C++ libraries could've been done with Swift. the server ecosystem was starting to come to life, even supported by IBM. I think the letdo…

Eh, I don't think Swift would ever have dethroned Python. What pain point would it practically solve? I don't use Python often but I don't hear folks complaining about it much. I do, though, think Swift had/has(?) a chance to dethrone Rust in the non-garbage collected space. Rust is incredibly powerful but sometimes you don't really need that complexity, you just need something that can compile cross-platform and mai…

> just need something that can compile cross-platform and maintain great performance.

I think Go has already taken that part of the cake.

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