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Sure Lattner and Musk are interesting people, but I find the level of hero worship in the tech industry to be sickening. Having used compilers for a few new la

Sure Lattner and Musk are interesting people, but I find the level of hero worship in the tech industry to be sickening. Having used compilers for a few new languages (Rust, Go, Dart, Kotlin, Swift). Swift is the only one I've had any issues with as well as Swift seems to be the only language to have adopted the "move fast and break things" philosophy of Silicon Valley. I dunno, I just don't see the argument.

abalone 10y ago
You're confusing language development with autonomous vehicle development. Think of the long term goal. It's desirable to move fast and fix things with language development in the near term, to achieve a more perfect design and accelerate its maturation at the temporary cost of more volatility. After this process achieves a high level of maturity, said design principles may offer a safer, more reliable programming system that would be better suited to safety-critical applications. Additionally I'm sure we can all agree there is no substitute for maturation through time and usage in the field. Which frankly is an argument for more popular languages over obscure ones. None of the ones you mentioned are ready for safety-critical system development (including Swift 3), but which one is most likely to achieve widespread adoption and field testing in the long run?
- devsquid 10y ago
  No I'm not confusing them. I'm responding directly to the comment that Chris lattner represents a more measured approach to software development than is tradition in the tech industry. I don't think Swift stands to gain wide spread traction outside of Apple orientated app development. Aside from a lack of stability, Apple is to well known for boxing its competitors out. I've used and loved their products my entire life and I know how annoying it is to go against Apple's grain.
  - jolux 10y ago
    >I don't think Swift stands to gain wide spread traction outside of Apple orientated app development. It already is though, there are several Linux web frameworks etc. It's open source and community run so I'm not sure how they're planning to box out competitors from it.
    - devsquid 10y ago
      There are some web frameworks that are indevelopment. That does not mean Swift has gained any traction. Also having toyed around with one, the experience was not great. When writing a server, I would take Go over Swift anyday. It out preforms it, uses less memory, its simpiler, oh and it uses a "tradiontal" GC.
      - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
        >uses less memory That is very much _not_ the case according to the testing I have done recently. Swift uses a lot less memory than Go unless the program uses only trivial amounts of memory in the first place. Using interfaces in Go data structures makes the difference even more pronounced. On top of that, all runtimes that use a tracing GC require tons of spare memory at all times unless programs are very carefully written to avoid memory allocation. That said, Swift has a few very weak spots when it comes to memory. Most notably the String type, which is terrible on all counts, but that is a whole different story.
        geodel 10y ago
        It will be great if you have any benchmark to share. From what s available on internet Swift does seem to use more memory than Go.
        fauigerzigerk 10y ago
        What sources have you found on the internet? My own code is unfortunately a bit messy and entangled with unrelated stuff. If I find the time I'm going to clean it up.
        pjmlp 10y ago
        > On top of that, all runtimes that use a tracing GC require tons of spare memory at all times unless programs are very carefully written to avoid memory allocation. Only if the said language doesn't allow for stack or static globals. Quite a few languages do allow it.
exDM69 10y ago
Lattner is best known for starting the whole LLVM project. Swift is just a small side project in comparison, it just got adopted by Apple for some reason. LLVM is one of the most influential pieces of software of the past decade. Hero worship isn't good but credit where credit is due.
- devsquid 10y ago
  Oh yea LLVM and Clang are incredible pieces of software! He is truly a master.
  - mpweiher 10y ago
    clang was mostly steve naroff.
- MrZipf 10y ago
  Are you sure no one else was involved in starting LLVM? PhD supervisor, fellow students, etc. Just saying...

abalone 10y ago

You're confusing language development with autonomous vehicle development. Think of the long term goal. It's desirable to move fast and fix things with language development in the near term, to achieve a more perfect design and accelerate its maturation at the temporary cost of more volatility. After this process achieves a high level of maturity, said design principles may offer a safer, more reliable programming system that would be better suited to safety-critical applications. Additionally I'm sure we can all agree there is no substitute for maturation through time and usage in the field. Which frankly is an argument for more popular languages over obscure ones. None of the ones you mentioned are ready for safety-critical system development (including Swift 3), but which one is most likely to achieve widespread adoption and field testing in the long run?

devsquid 10y ago
No I'm not confusing them. I'm responding directly to the comment that Chris lattner represents a more measured approach to software development than is tradition in the tech industry. I don't think Swift stands to gain wide spread traction outside of Apple orientated app development. Aside from a lack of stability, Apple is to well known for boxing its competitors out. I've used and loved their products my entire life and I know how annoying it is to go against Apple's grain.
- jolux 10y ago
  >I don't think Swift stands to gain wide spread traction outside of Apple orientated app development. It already is though, there are several Linux web frameworks etc. It's open source and community run so I'm not sure how they're planning to box out competitors from it.
  - devsquid 10y ago
    There are some web frameworks that are indevelopment. That does not mean Swift has gained any traction. Also having toyed around with one, the experience was not great. When writing a server, I would take Go over Swift anyday. It out preforms it, uses less memory, its simpiler, oh and it uses a "tradiontal" GC.
    - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
      >uses less memory That is very much _not_ the case according to the testing I have done recently. Swift uses a lot less memory than Go unless the program uses only trivial amounts of memory in the first place. Using interfaces in Go data structures makes the difference even more pronounced. On top of that, all runtimes that use a tracing GC require tons of spare memory at all times unless programs are very carefully written to avoid memory allocation. That said, Swift has a few very weak spots when it comes to memory. Most notably the String type, which is terrible on all counts, but that is a whole different story.
      - geodel 10y ago
        It will be great if you have any benchmark to share. From what s available on internet Swift does seem to use more memory than Go.
        fauigerzigerk 10y ago
        What sources have you found on the internet? My own code is unfortunately a bit messy and entangled with unrelated stuff. If I find the time I'm going to clean it up.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        > On top of that, all runtimes that use a tracing GC require tons of spare memory at all times unless programs are very carefully written to avoid memory allocation. Only if the said language doesn't allow for stack or static globals. Quite a few languages do allow it.

exDM69 10y ago

Lattner is best known for starting the whole LLVM project. Swift is just a small side project in comparison, it just got adopted by Apple for some reason. LLVM is one of the most influential pieces of software of the past decade. Hero worship isn't good but credit where credit is due.

devsquid 10y ago
Oh yea LLVM and Clang are incredible pieces of software! He is truly a master.
- mpweiher 10y ago
  clang was mostly steve naroff.
MrZipf 10y ago
Are you sure no one else was involved in starting LLVM? PhD supervisor, fellow students, etc. Just saying...