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Serious question: Is Swift actually getting any traction? I saw the flurry of excitement when it was announced, but it seems the interest around this language
by vegabook 10y ago
Serious question: Is Swift actually getting any traction?
I saw the flurry of excitement when it was announced, but it seems the interest around this language has fallen off a cliff. Am I supposed to be excited about its intrinsic features or am I only supposed to be excited if I'm firmly locked inside Apple's garden? Should I learn this instead of Rust/Ocaml/Elixir to further my skills independently of any Apple-oriented motivations?
- melling 10y agoIt's gaining a lot of traction with iOS developers. If you just want to learn a language to learn a language, ocaml or Haskell would be more interesting. Give Swift another 2 or 3 years before it gains traction outside of iOS.
- jaegerpicker 10y agoIt's one of the fastest growing languages out there. I don't think OCaml or Haskell are missing any features of swift but I definitely believe swift to be an much easier to learn language that supports the majority of the features those languages support. It's also more likely to be able to be used on the job than those languages. I'm a big fan of Rust but it's growth has been slow and Elixir is really aimed at a different target than Rust or Swift.
- steveklabnik 10y agoHow are you measuring Rust's growth?
- jaegerpicker 10y agoNumber of available jobs, open source projects (outside of mozilla who created it), tiobe index growth, etc... It's less a totally qualified index of growth vs a general informed opinion. To be cleared I really enjoy Rust and hope that it grows like crazy soon but compared to Swift I think it's growth has been smaller.
- steveklabnik 10y agoCool. Always curious!