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This feature wasn’t even invented in Swift, the fact that a patent was granted on it shows the sorry state of technical policy making

• swiley 8y ago
  I think American patents changed some time in the past decade to match how they’re done in the rest of the world; The first person to patent the thing gets the rights completely regardless of the time or person the implementation is associated with.
  • brlewis 8y ago
    Prior art still invalidates patents AFAIK. Unless there's some recent Fed Circuit decision that changes that.
  • pgeorgi 8y ago
    But only in the first year after first publication. So if the feature was available elsewhere for long enough, no patent for anybody.
• willio58 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, which language would you say first implemented optionals?
  • klrr 8y ago
    I don't know which specific language, but there been around since at least 80s I would guess.
  • davidgrenier 8y ago
    This is a specialisation of algebraic datatypes, it has to go at least as far back as SML.
• pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Good thing this patent does not protect any programming language features. (It protects how Apple implemented some features)