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What do you mean by Apple's grip on Swift?

saagarjha 7y ago
Apple has de-facto control of where the language is heading.
bsaul 7y ago
look at the discussion on swift forum when SwiftUI was announced. They added a huge batch of new features to the language with a huge proposal that got released with xcode eventhough it has never been discussed beforehand publicly (for obvious reasons). Apple is clearly the main force behind Swift at the moment, which has some good sides (at least the language is evolving), but is pushing the tech toward a certain direction at the detriment of others (IMHO). Apple is mostly building frontend tech, and swift initial goal was to also be a great force for server-side tech (which means great cross-platform experience). As an example, i don't think apple is ever going to release a server side framework, or a cross-platform GUI framework able to create android app. The only swift/android project i know on github (https://github.com/readdle/swift-android-toolchain https://github.com/readdle/swift-android-toolchain) is using a swift fork to disable objective-c features that don't work well on other platform. That's telling.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > i don't think apple is ever going to release a server side framework Maybe not, but there is this: https://github.com/apple/swift-nio https://github.com/apple/swift-nio
  - bsaul 7y ago
    Yes, and then there's kitura and vapor which are trying to make it happen. But look at what Lattner's concurrent manifesto aimed at two years ago : https://gist.github.com/lattner/31ed37682ef1576b16bca1432ea9f782 https://gist.github.com/lattner/31ed37682ef1576b16bca1432ea9... We still don't have async / await, and that was just step 1.
- Someone 7y ago
  ”I don't think apple is ever going to release a server side framework” I don’t think Apple releasing a server-side framework would help, as nobody would be using it. Also, there is the Swift Server Work Group (https://swift.org/server/ https://swift.org/server/), where two out of six members have an Apple email address. They recently wrote a kind of “state of the union” that, in my view, shows progress is made towards using Swift on servers (https://swift.org/blog/sswg-update/ https://swift.org/blog/sswg-update/) As to a cross-platform GUI framework: I don’t see them doing that, just as I don’t see Microsoft or google doing that.
  - jmull 7y ago
    > I don’t think Apple releasing a server-side framework would help, as nobody would be using it. Yeah. I think something useful has a much better chance of coming out of the community than Apple. Let Apple focus on what they're good at and leave the server-side stuff to the people who breathe it every day.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    As to a cross-platform GUI framework: I don’t see them doing that, just as I don’t see Microsoft or google doing that. ? Flutter and Xamarin already exist.
rvz 7y ago
Well if you look at the "cross-platform" support compared to the other languages such as Go and Rust, Swift is quite poor at this: Apart from Linux, platforms such as Windows, FreeBSD, WASM, Haiku, etc are all unofficial ports which community members have to maintain but it is getting there, slowly. In terms of the prospect of a cross-platform GUI, SwiftUI is taking a similar direction to Flutter and React Native. I see no other serious alternatives from the likes of Go or Rust at the moment. As far as Apple is concerned, they have total control of the direction of the language and they pick and choose which components to open-source.

Apple has de-facto control of where the language is heading.

look at the discussion on swift forum when SwiftUI was announced. They added a huge batch of new features to the language with a huge proposal that got released with xcode eventhough it has never been discussed beforehand publicly (for obvious reasons). Apple is clearly the main force behind Swift at the moment, which has some good sides (at least the language is evolving), but is pushing the tech toward a certain direction at the detriment of others (IMHO). Apple is mostly building frontend tech, and swift initial goal was to also be a great force for server-side tech (which means great cross-platform experience). As an example, i don't think apple is ever going to release a server side framework, or a cross-platform GUI framework able to create android app. The only swift/android project i know on github (https://github.com/readdle/swift-android-toolchain https://github.com/readdle/swift-android-toolchain) is using a swift fork to disable objective-c features that don't work well on other platform. That's telling.

saagarjha 7y ago
> i don't think apple is ever going to release a server side framework Maybe not, but there is this: https://github.com/apple/swift-nio https://github.com/apple/swift-nio
- bsaul 7y ago
  Yes, and then there's kitura and vapor which are trying to make it happen. But look at what Lattner's concurrent manifesto aimed at two years ago : https://gist.github.com/lattner/31ed37682ef1576b16bca1432ea9f782 https://gist.github.com/lattner/31ed37682ef1576b16bca1432ea9... We still don't have async / await, and that was just step 1.
Someone 7y ago
”I don't think apple is ever going to release a server side framework” I don’t think Apple releasing a server-side framework would help, as nobody would be using it. Also, there is the Swift Server Work Group (https://swift.org/server/ https://swift.org/server/), where two out of six members have an Apple email address. They recently wrote a kind of “state of the union” that, in my view, shows progress is made towards using Swift on servers (https://swift.org/blog/sswg-update/ https://swift.org/blog/sswg-update/) As to a cross-platform GUI framework: I don’t see them doing that, just as I don’t see Microsoft or google doing that.
- jmull 7y ago
  > I don’t think Apple releasing a server-side framework would help, as nobody would be using it. Yeah. I think something useful has a much better chance of coming out of the community than Apple. Let Apple focus on what they're good at and leave the server-side stuff to the people who breathe it every day.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  As to a cross-platform GUI framework: I don’t see them doing that, just as I don’t see Microsoft or google doing that. ? Flutter and Xamarin already exist.

rvz 7y ago

Well if you look at the "cross-platform" support compared to the other languages such as Go and Rust, Swift is quite poor at this: Apart from Linux, platforms such as Windows, FreeBSD, WASM, Haiku, etc are all unofficial ports which community members have to maintain but it is getting there, slowly. In terms of the prospect of a cross-platform GUI, SwiftUI is taking a similar direction to Flutter and React Native. I see no other serious alternatives from the likes of Go or Rust at the moment. As far as Apple is concerned, they have total control of the direction of the language and they pick and choose which components to open-source.