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Naive question - what makes Swift less suitable than Rust for this?

by manmal 6y ago

PeterisP 6y ago
Isn't Swift limited to just a few platforms? It seems that it's not available both for the largest desktop platform, Windows, and for the largest non-desktop platform, Linux on ARM (https://swift.org/blog/swift-linux-port/ https://swift.org/blog/swift-linux-port/ says "Currently x86_64 is the only supported architecture on Linux.") i.e. all the IoT devices which need code in a "systems language" and Android phones.
rayiner 6y ago
Swift doesn’t have sufficient control over memory (where things get allocated and using or avoiding the reference counted garbage collector).
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Swift doesn’t make low-level control of memory and other low-level details easy. Long-term: I feel that Swift was meant as Apple’s answer to C# and as way to retain XCode users as Objective-C became increasingly unfashionable over the past decade and Apple lost employees who could properly maintain it. Swift won’t go away, but I suspect that Apple doesn’t want to have to pay to maintain Swift while the rest of the industry gets to use it for free and port it to platforms that Apple won’t see any revenue from: i.e. Apple doesn’t want to be like Sun/Oracle and have other companies (Google) use their work (Java) for a competing platform (Android’s Dalvik). So, I’m wary of adopting Swift - while Apple does currently support it on non-Darwin platforms right now I fully expect Apple to lose interest in maintaining first-class support for Windows and Linux at some point, just like how OpenStep was repurposed as a Mac-only when it became the rational decision for them. Maintaining a thriving developer ecosystem and platform requires a degree of trust, transparency and a history of commitment to a product - and Apple (as a company) is the anathema of transparency.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Apple does write software for other platforms [1][2]. If they continue their shift to services I only expect that to increase. However I think you are correct in that they won't want to put much effort into it. Their support for developers is already somewhat half-hearted if you compare it to Microsoft. Using XCode over the last few months has made me appreciate how good Visual Studio is. Apple's developer documentation has me missing Microsoft's. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc.&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc.&h... [2] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210384 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210384

Naive question - what makes Swift less suitable than Rust for this?

by manmal 6y ago

Naive question - what makes Swift less suitable than Rust for this?

Isn't Swift limited to just a few platforms? It seems that it's not available both for the largest desktop platform, Windows, and for the largest non-desktop platform, Linux on ARM (https://swift.org/blog/swift-linux-port/ https://swift.org/blog/swift-linux-port/ says "Currently x86_64 is the only supported architecture on Linux.") i.e. all the IoT devices which need code in a "systems language" and Android phones.

rayiner 6y ago

Swift doesn’t have sufficient control over memory (where things get allocated and using or avoiding the reference counted garbage collector).

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

Swift doesn’t make low-level control of memory and other low-level details easy. Long-term: I feel that Swift was meant as Apple’s answer to C# and as way to retain XCode users as Objective-C became increasingly unfashionable over the past decade and Apple lost employees who could properly maintain it. Swift won’t go away, but I suspect that Apple doesn’t want to have to pay to maintain Swift while the rest of the industry gets to use it for free and port it to platforms that Apple won’t see any revenue from: i.e. Apple doesn’t want to be like Sun/Oracle and have other companies (Google) use their work (Java) for a competing platform (Android’s Dalvik). So, I’m wary of adopting Swift - while Apple does currently support it on non-Darwin platforms right now I fully expect Apple to lose interest in maintaining first-class support for Windows and Linux at some point, just like how OpenStep was repurposed as a Mac-only when it became the rational decision for them. Maintaining a thriving developer ecosystem and platform requires a degree of trust, transparency and a history of commitment to a product - and Apple (as a company) is the anathema of transparency.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Apple does write software for other platforms [1][2]. If they continue their shift to services I only expect that to increase. However I think you are correct in that they won't want to put much effort into it. Their support for developers is already somewhat half-hearted if you compare it to Microsoft. Using XCode over the last few months has made me appreciate how good Visual Studio is. Apple's developer documentation has me missing Microsoft's. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc.&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Apple+Inc.&h... [2] https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210384 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210384