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How is the Swift experience outside of the Apple ecosystem? And how does it compare to other languages like C# and Java?
by Decabytes 5y ago
How is the Swift experience outside of the Apple ecosystem? And how does it compare to other languages like C# and Java?
- LASR 5y agoPretty bad. In my last company we tried to get server-side swift integrated into a backend microservice. While there is big-company momentum behind swift on servers, it’s always a second-class citizen compared to its own native platforms (iOS & macOS). After IBM stopped backing it, pretty much killed credibility in server-side swift. We switched over to Rust fairly early on, and we were glad we did. I think the realization was that client-side app engineering is just different from distributed back-end systems. On iOS, we have a very rich set of standard toolkits we can consume. So development is fast and streamlined. Battle-hardened. But with swift on servers, you’re reinventing the wheel for even the most basic things. So it may very well be a completely different language on the backend at that point.
- chrismsimpson 5y agoI was perusing the implementation of String the other day and it’s intrinsically linked to the ObjC runtime to allow toll free bridging. The multi platform story for Swift is non existent.
- jshier 5y agoThis is only true on Apple platforms. String, of course, exists on all platforms. Of all the issues Swift's cross platform story has, this isn't one.
- Zababa 5y agoFor web backend, I like Swift better as a language, but the ecosystem and the performance are not really here. The compilation times are also a bit annoying.