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I actually like Swift: advanced type system and compiler, clean syntax, very fast. I think optionals are a great way of saying: “Hey developer, this value can

I actually like Swift: advanced type system and compiler, clean syntax, very fast. I think optionals are a great way of saying: “Hey developer, this value can sometimes be nil; be sloppy or not, your call.” Any language you pick is an interplay of choices and compromises. No such thing as perfect.

mpweiher 7y ago
> very fast This is a common sentiment, but it rarely holds up to closer scrutiny (such as measurements...). Swift is both slow to run and very slow to compile. Both compile and runtime come with extremely high variance. Such unpredictability is arguably even worse than just plain slow performance.
- notafrog 7y ago
  Up until Swift 4, compilation took longer than with Objective-C according to my experience. Not sure how much Swift 5 has changed things.
- plainOldText 7y ago
  In most of these benchmarks [1] Swift's performance comes pretty close to that of Rust. So yeah, I would call that very fast. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190402100249/https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/faster/swift-rust.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190402100249/https://benchmark...
  - raphlinus 7y ago
    Try some JSON benchmarks with Codables in Swift vs serde in Rust. Rust smokes Swift, something like 20x. Incidentally I've spent considerable effort on this problem, including writing a prototype faster JSON parser in Swift (still about 3x slower than Rust, but a huge speedup over what's there). I couldn't get anyone in the Swift community to care enough to motivate me to finish the work, which is indicative of a deeper problem: Swift just doesn't have "performance culture," the benchmark game results notwithstanding.
  - mpweiher 7y ago
    Hmm...when I look at those numbers, Swift only comes close in a very few, is significantly slower in most (50%-4x) and much slower in one (45x): fannkuch / pidgins: essentially the same binary-trees / fasta / Mandelbrot: ~ 1.5x slower spectral-norm / reverse-complement: >= 2x slower k-nucleotide / n-body: ~4x slower regex-redux: 45x slower

mpweiher 7y ago

> very fast This is a common sentiment, but it rarely holds up to closer scrutiny (such as measurements...). Swift is both slow to run and very slow to compile. Both compile and runtime come with extremely high variance. Such unpredictability is arguably even worse than just plain slow performance.

notafrog 7y ago
Up until Swift 4, compilation took longer than with Objective-C according to my experience. Not sure how much Swift 5 has changed things.
plainOldText 7y ago
In most of these benchmarks [1] Swift's performance comes pretty close to that of Rust. So yeah, I would call that very fast. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190402100249/https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/faster/swift-rust.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190402100249/https://benchmark...
- raphlinus 7y ago
  Try some JSON benchmarks with Codables in Swift vs serde in Rust. Rust smokes Swift, something like 20x. Incidentally I've spent considerable effort on this problem, including writing a prototype faster JSON parser in Swift (still about 3x slower than Rust, but a huge speedup over what's there). I couldn't get anyone in the Swift community to care enough to motivate me to finish the work, which is indicative of a deeper problem: Swift just doesn't have "performance culture," the benchmark game results notwithstanding.
- mpweiher 7y ago
  Hmm...when I look at those numbers, Swift only comes close in a very few, is significantly slower in most (50%-4x) and much slower in one (45x): fannkuch / pidgins: essentially the same binary-trees / fasta / Mandelbrot: ~ 1.5x slower spectral-norm / reverse-complement: >= 2x slower k-nucleotide / n-body: ~4x slower regex-redux: 45x slower