Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
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Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#2Swift has all the things I want in a language
- Strong Typing
- Great Performance
- Actor Model Concurrency [0]
- Modern Ergonomics
- Corporate Backing
- Performance
- Functional Style
- LLMs perform well with it [1]
- Usable across iOS, Android, Web, and Browsers [2][3]
The only thing its missing is adoption outside of the iOS space.
I'm not sure it will be able to make that leap, but the ingredients are there.
If it does I'd be happy to make it my primary language.
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[0] https://www.hackingwithswift.com/quick-start/concurrency/wha...
[1] https://github.com/Tencent-Hunyuan/AutoCodeBenchmark/blob/ma...
[2] https://www.swift.org/blog/nightly-swift-sdk-for-android/
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#3Swift has all the things I want in a language - Strong Typing - Great Performance - Actor Model Concurrency [0] - Modern Ergonomics - Corporate Backing - Performance - Functional Style - LLMs perform well with it [1] - Usable across iOS, Android, Web, and Browsers [2][3] The only thing its missing is adoption outside of the iOS space. I'm not sure it will be able to make that leap, but the ingredients are there. If i…
I agree, but it's already been 15 years since it was released so I'm losing hope..
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#4[deleted]
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#5Swift has all the things I want in a language - Strong Typing - Great Performance - Actor Model Concurrency [0] - Modern Ergonomics - Corporate Backing - Performance - Functional Style - LLMs perform well with it [1] - Usable across iOS, Android, Web, and Browsers [2][3] The only thing its missing is adoption outside of the iOS space. I'm not sure it will be able to make that leap, but the ingredients are there. If i…
[deleted]
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#6Swift has all the things I want in a language - Strong Typing - Great Performance - Actor Model Concurrency [0] - Modern Ergonomics - Corporate Backing - Performance - Functional Style - LLMs perform well with it [1] - Usable across iOS, Android, Web, and Browsers [2][3] The only thing its missing is adoption outside of the iOS space. I'm not sure it will be able to make that leap, but the ingredients are there. If i…
> - Modern Ergonomics
What does this even mean? Modern Swift looks like a haphazard mishmash of conflicting features where every problem is solved by "just one more keyword bro". In 2024 it had 217 keywords: https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1841251621004538183 and that was reduced slightly, to 203, in 2025: https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1962242782405267617
According to Lattner they never even had the time to design anything due to time pressure from Apple [1]. So Swift ended up with a type system that the compiler can't even check and is impossible to fix. So the compiler routinely just gives up and complains on even the most trivial code.
[1] 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, special stuff...
We had a ton of users, it had a ton of iternal technical debt... the whole team was behind, and instead of fixing the core, what the team did is they started adding all these special cases.
--- end quote ---
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#7Swift has all the things I want in a language - Strong Typing - Great Performance - Actor Model Concurrency [0] - Modern Ergonomics - Corporate Backing - Performance - Functional Style - LLMs perform well with it [1] - Usable across iOS, Android, Web, and Browsers [2][3] The only thing its missing is adoption outside of the iOS space. I'm not sure it will be able to make that leap, but the ingredients are there. If i…
> - Modern Ergonomics What does this even mean? Modern Swift looks like a haphazard mishmash of conflicting features where every problem is solved by "just one more keyword bro". In 2024 it had 217 keywords : https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1841251621004538183 and that was reduced slightly, to 203, in 2025: https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1962242782405267617 According to Lattner they never even had the time…
It’s not necessary to use all or even most of those features, though, and so a nice balance of expressiveness and functionality is possible. I’ll take it over dying on weird hills in language design in pursuit of ideological purity or mountains of ceremonial code and unavoidably ugly syntax.
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Modern Ergonomics What does this even mean? Modern Swift looks like a haphazard mishmash of conflicting features where every problem is solved by "just one more keyword bro". In 2024 it had 217 keywords : https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1841251621004538183 and that was reduced slightly, to 203, in 2025: https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1962242782405267617 According to Lattner they never even had the time…
It’s not necessary to use all or even most of those features, though, and so a nice balance of expressiveness and functionality is possible. I’ll take it over dying on weird hills in language design in pursuit of ideological purity or mountains of ceremonial code and unavoidably ugly syntax.
> mountains of ceremonial code and unavoidably ugly syntax.
you... just described Swift, really :)
Also, all those features exist even if you don't use them all. Which makes the language complex, cumbersome, and makes its compiler slow, complex and brittle. A language shouldn't be a collection of one-off edge cases, and this has nothing to do with ideological purity
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#9Speaker here — I’m responsible for the slides and the flower shirt.
Happy to answer questions.
Re: Swift in the Browser with ElementaryUI (Swift FOSDEM 2026 Talk) [video]
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not necessary to use all or even most of those features, though, and so a nice balance of expressiveness and functionality is possible. I’ll take it over dying on weird hills in language design in pursuit of ideological purity or mountains of ceremonial code and unavoidably ugly syntax.
> mountains of ceremonial code and unavoidably ugly syntax. you... just described Swift, really :) Also, all those features exist even if you don't use them all. Which makes the language complex, cumbersome, and makes its compiler slow, complex and brittle. A language shouldn't be a collection of one-off edge cases, and this has nothing to do with ideological purity
I dunno, with a handful of exceptions I'm still mostly writing Swift the same way I did 5+ years ago. Unless you're using SwiftUI, new features haven't changed a whole lot in real world use.
Whatever the case, I don't enjoy writing languages more obsessed with theory or design purity (like Kotlin) as much.