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There’s some really interesting work coming out of the Swift project and smart people involved in it’s development but I keep feeling like not enough attention

by jamil7 5y ago

There’s some really interesting work coming out of the Swift project and smart people involved in it’s development but I keep feeling like not enough attention is being paid to basics. Tooling and compiler performance need some serious attention. These are boring tasks but crucial for the language’s wider appeal.

zepto 5y ago
The linked project is nothing but tooling and compiler work. It’s hard to understand your comment in that context.
- b3morales 5y ago
  Both of these things can be true at the same time. This is a chunk of necessary work and not enough of that kind of work is being done.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Obviously, but you saying that doesn’t explain what the person I was replying to had in mind. Their comment doesn’t read that way.
- refulgentis 5y ago
  That's not true in even a specious way. You left out "performance" and then shot down a strawman by claiming an independent parsing library improves compiler performance.
  - zepto 5y ago
    I don’t think you understand what the project is. It’s not an independent library. The plan is for it to take over parsing throughout the compiler. Numerous performance improvements that would impact both tooling and the compiler are listed as goals.
    - refulgentis 5y ago
      You can repeatedly condescend to everyone in this thread, yet, we all continue to grok that having a plan of goals for improvements that would impact both tooling and compiler, when the plan it has to take over parsing throughout the compiler succeeds, is not the same as focusing on compiler performance. I hope this is a silver bullet that somehow address all of this and succeeds, but 7 years of Swift in, I've seen plenty of plans of goals that could do things if other ambitious plans succeed.
      - zepto 5y ago
        > by claiming an independent parsing library improves compiler performance. The library is not independent, and one of the goals is to improve compiler performance. You wrote a criticism of me of me based on your own misunderstanding of the project, in response to a comment that wasn’t addressed to you. Leaving aside that the personal attack was pointless in the first place, it’s not obvious what value there is in trying to defend it.
slavapestov 5y ago
Swift 5.4 and 5.5 made some major improvements to incremental builds (rebuilding fewer files after a change) and pretty much every release since 5.1 or so improved full module rebuild performance (doing less work for a file that actually has to be rebuild). But it can be hard to perceive small cumulative improvements when everyone’s codebase keeps getting larger as well.

by jamil7 5y ago

zepto 5y ago

The linked project is nothing but tooling and compiler work. It’s hard to understand your comment in that context.

b3morales 5y ago
Both of these things can be true at the same time. This is a chunk of necessary work and not enough of that kind of work is being done.
- zepto 5y ago
  Obviously, but you saying that doesn’t explain what the person I was replying to had in mind. Their comment doesn’t read that way.
refulgentis 5y ago
That's not true in even a specious way. You left out "performance" and then shot down a strawman by claiming an independent parsing library improves compiler performance.
- zepto 5y ago
  I don’t think you understand what the project is. It’s not an independent library. The plan is for it to take over parsing throughout the compiler. Numerous performance improvements that would impact both tooling and the compiler are listed as goals.
  - refulgentis 5y ago
    You can repeatedly condescend to everyone in this thread, yet, we all continue to grok that having a plan of goals for improvements that would impact both tooling and compiler, when the plan it has to take over parsing throughout the compiler succeeds, is not the same as focusing on compiler performance. I hope this is a silver bullet that somehow address all of this and succeeds, but 7 years of Swift in, I've seen plenty of plans of goals that could do things if other ambitious plans succeed.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > by claiming an independent parsing library improves compiler performance. The library is not independent, and one of the goals is to improve compiler performance. You wrote a criticism of me of me based on your own misunderstanding of the project, in response to a comment that wasn’t addressed to you. Leaving aside that the personal attack was pointless in the first place, it’s not obvious what value there is in trying to defend it.

slavapestov 5y ago

Swift 5.4 and 5.5 made some major improvements to incremental builds (rebuilding fewer files after a change) and pretty much every release since 5.1 or so improved full module rebuild performance (doing less work for a file that actually has to be rebuild). But it can be hard to perceive small cumulative improvements when everyone’s codebase keeps getting larger as well.