5 ms·

> meaning you can build functions like this: Is it just me, or is that code example incredibly byzantine? I know I'm only a Swift dilettante, but that struck m

by sago 10y ago

> meaning you can build functions like this: Is it just me, or is that code example incredibly byzantine? I know I'm only a Swift dilettante, but that struck me as the kind of code we want to actively avoid building. The conceptual grouping, the syntactic grouping and the line layout grouping seem to be carrying three contradictory messages about structure, requiring careful parsing to grok.

ebbv 10y ago
Yeah I've used Swift a bit and found it in need of cleaning up. To be quite honest, I've found in the last 5 years a lot of professional developers have lost sight of the maxim that brevity is not better than clarity.
- melling 10y ago
  Swift is a big step forward over Objective C in many ways: http://ctarda.com/2016/05/clarity-is-more-important-than-brevity-sometimes-you-can-have-both http://ctarda.com/2016/05/clarity-is-more-important-than-bre...
  - ebbv 10y ago
    Yes it is. I like it a lot more than Go too. I wasn't slagging Swift, I was talking about the code example in the original article (like the comment I was replying to.)
- fleshweasel 10y ago
  Do you have any examples you care to share of Swift that needs cleaning up?
  - ebbv 10y ago
    Sorry for the poor wording, I was responding to the comment saying that the code example was hard to read. I was agreeing with that. I really like Swift itself.
BrutallyHonest 10y ago
That's the biggest problem with adoption of academic-style (Haskell, OCaml etc.) functional programming languages. The proponents believe that 'shorter = more readable'. And if they would try to make it more readable it would start looking like Scala and C# (hence their popularity).
- rubiquity 10y ago
  Don't blame Haskell, OCaml, etc. here. 90% of that syntax that is in the example is Swift specific and I agree it is cluttered and ugly. Swift would do better to stop trying to be like C/C++ and be more like ML (you can tell the language wants to be like ML, but I'm guessing there are internal politics to make it more C/C++-like for adoption reasons. There's even (or there were) a few design documents hinting at intentionally being C like).
  - gpderetta 10y ago
    I don't know, it seems to me that at least a few in the core swift team are well known C++ hackers. For example, in addition to Chris Lattner of LLVM fame, David Abrahams, which I believe is still the lead in charge of Swift standard library, was a founding member of Boost and, relevant to this post, (co-)author of Boost.Iterator. Doug Gregor which is also part of swift core team, is also a prominent ex-Booster. Edit: Doug was of course also the principal author of the failed C++11 Concepts proposal
  - jlarocco 10y ago
    I don't think the OP was "blaming" Haskell and OCaml as much as he was blaming the people trying to add Haskell and features and syntax to Swift and C++. Haskell syntax works great for Haskell, because the whole language has consistent syntax for things like lazy evaluation and lambda functions. The problem is when people try to tack on those features to Swift or C++ and make it work with the ugly syntax from those languages, it ends up making it even uglier. To me, the sample code looks like a bastardized mix of C++ and Haskell, and it's pretty hard to figure out what it's doing, even in the toy code samples.
austinz 10y ago
I'm not particularly enthused with how the code was presented. Here's a marginally more readable version of the first large snippet that still doesn't exceed 77 (or 79) characters in width: https://gist.github.com/austinzheng/dbee353163eb22920d7a567c2366058f https://gist.github.com/austinzheng/dbee353163eb22920d7a567c...
Razengan 10y ago
I like this one better from the actual proposal on GitHub [1]: for view in sequence(first: someView, next: { $0.superview }) { // someView, someView.superview, someView.superview.superview, ... } Seems rather handy. [1]: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0094-sequence-function.md https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...

by sago 10y ago

ebbv 10y ago

Yeah I've used Swift a bit and found it in need of cleaning up. To be quite honest, I've found in the last 5 years a lot of professional developers have lost sight of the maxim that brevity is not better than clarity.

melling 10y ago
Swift is a big step forward over Objective C in many ways: http://ctarda.com/2016/05/clarity-is-more-important-than-brevity-sometimes-you-can-have-both http://ctarda.com/2016/05/clarity-is-more-important-than-bre...
- ebbv 10y ago
  Yes it is. I like it a lot more than Go too. I wasn't slagging Swift, I was talking about the code example in the original article (like the comment I was replying to.)
fleshweasel 10y ago
Do you have any examples you care to share of Swift that needs cleaning up?
- ebbv 10y ago
  Sorry for the poor wording, I was responding to the comment saying that the code example was hard to read. I was agreeing with that. I really like Swift itself.

BrutallyHonest 10y ago

That's the biggest problem with adoption of academic-style (Haskell, OCaml etc.) functional programming languages. The proponents believe that 'shorter = more readable'. And if they would try to make it more readable it would start looking like Scala and C# (hence their popularity).

rubiquity 10y ago
Don't blame Haskell, OCaml, etc. here. 90% of that syntax that is in the example is Swift specific and I agree it is cluttered and ugly. Swift would do better to stop trying to be like C/C++ and be more like ML (you can tell the language wants to be like ML, but I'm guessing there are internal politics to make it more C/C++-like for adoption reasons. There's even (or there were) a few design documents hinting at intentionally being C like).
- gpderetta 10y ago
  I don't know, it seems to me that at least a few in the core swift team are well known C++ hackers. For example, in addition to Chris Lattner of LLVM fame, David Abrahams, which I believe is still the lead in charge of Swift standard library, was a founding member of Boost and, relevant to this post, (co-)author of Boost.Iterator. Doug Gregor which is also part of swift core team, is also a prominent ex-Booster. Edit: Doug was of course also the principal author of the failed C++11 Concepts proposal
- jlarocco 10y ago
  I don't think the OP was "blaming" Haskell and OCaml as much as he was blaming the people trying to add Haskell and features and syntax to Swift and C++. Haskell syntax works great for Haskell, because the whole language has consistent syntax for things like lazy evaluation and lambda functions. The problem is when people try to tack on those features to Swift or C++ and make it work with the ugly syntax from those languages, it ends up making it even uglier. To me, the sample code looks like a bastardized mix of C++ and Haskell, and it's pretty hard to figure out what it's doing, even in the toy code samples.

austinz 10y ago

I'm not particularly enthused with how the code was presented. Here's a marginally more readable version of the first large snippet that still doesn't exceed 77 (or 79) characters in width: https://gist.github.com/austinzheng/dbee353163eb22920d7a567c2366058f https://gist.github.com/austinzheng/dbee353163eb22920d7a567c...

Razengan 10y ago

I like this one better from the actual proposal on GitHub [1]: for view in sequence(first: someView, next: { $0.superview }) { // someView, someView.superview, someView.superview.superview, ... } Seems rather handy. [1]: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0094-sequence-function.md https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...