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I skimmed through the blog post, and it seems to me that they are not claiming they invented something new, just that they are adding this to Swift language. (

I skimmed through the blog post, and it seems to me that they are not claiming they invented something new, just that they are adding this to Swift language. (Distributed) actor model is nothing new, but I definitely wouldn't classify it as something that's common in other languages. To my knowledge Erlang/OTP is the only mainstream language where this is part of the standard library. There are implementations for other languages, such as Akka for Java/Scala and Orleans for dotnet, but most languages (sadly) don't have a battle-tested implementation of this.

teakettle42 5y ago
> most languages (sadly) don't have a battle-tested implementation of this. I’d argue that this is because it’s a failed idea that conflates OO encapsulation, concurrency constraints, identity, serialization, and networking into a behemoth that does none of those things well.
alexashka 5y ago
They are adding features they 'took' to put it kindly from other existing, mature implementations without giving any credit or acknowledgement. Not only that, they expect people to test their beta grade software because they keep releasing it half baked ever since the release of Swift itself. It's embarrassing and it also angers me because these companies have wall gardened their ecosystems to proprietary languages and tools that all do the same thing poorly, differently and in ways that prevent sane cross platform development, on purpose, this being yet another apple-only 'thing'. Here's Swift's roadmap: copy C# and other languages for the next 5 years while making sure you can't write cross platform code by adding arbitrary garbage like SwiftUI or this 'distributed actor' implementation that will surely differ and not be compatible with existing features of other languages and their tooling.
- zenron 5y ago
  Gosu's roadmap... copy .NET and Groovy Kotlin's roadmap... Copy Gosu and Groovy Java's roadmap... Make Gosu, Groovy and Kotlin redundant by supporting the idioms of Gosu and Kotlin eventually and force those languages to 'nativize' their underlying implementations. Manifold's roadmap... Ditch Gosu on the JVM and make a java library, copy all the stuff Java doesn't' have a plan for like .Net's (and by extension Gosu's) class extensions and java 8 to 9 workarounds We could go on and on. Nothing new under the sun. Great minds think alike and at the end of the day the value of delivering a product is what matters in the end.
  - alexashka 5y ago
    Ah yes, that's exactly what the slave owners said before the civil war - look at the product we are delivering, and everyone else's doing it too! Their argument was so compelling that we decided to keep having slaves.
    - zenron 5y ago
      That might be the worst analogies I've ever heard. Humans extracting value asymmetrically out of captive humans has nothing to do with new syntactical features and/or sugar of other languages that language developers are inspired implement to implement in their own language because they solve modern workflow. And those developers are well compensated for for their contributions being by monetary, notoriety or self satisfactory means.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  > without giving any credit or acknowledgement You could be forgiven for not being familiar with the Actor model. But if you’re familiar with it, saying that isn’t recognition is bonkers. Everyone who knows what Actors are knows they’re referencing Erlang/OTP.
  - ProfHewitt 5y ago
    The Actor Paradigm is much more widespread with offerings from Microsoft, Lightbend, etc.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    The model even predates that. It’s like one of the OG concurrency ideas IIRC.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- rimliu 5y ago
  We get it, you know nothing about Swift, but hate it.
- freck 5y ago
  This blog post is an announcement for a wide audience. In the proposal[1], which gives detail on motivations and implementation, there is an "Acknowledgements & Prior Art" section that mentions Akka, Orleans, Erlang, and Elixir. [1]: https://github.com/ktoso/swift-evolution/blob/distributed-revised/proposals/nnnn-distributed-actors.md#acknowledgments-prior-art https://github.com/ktoso/swift-evolution/blob/distributed-re...
  - alexashka 5y ago
    Ah yes, they acknowledge it in a sentence down on page 37 in a document only people paid by apple read top to bottom. Thank you. That really changes things.
louthy 5y ago
> Orleans for dotnet Also Akka for .NET and my echo-process library [1] https://github.com/louthy/echo-process https://github.com/louthy/echo-process

teakettle42 5y ago

> most languages (sadly) don't have a battle-tested implementation of this. I’d argue that this is because it’s a failed idea that conflates OO encapsulation, concurrency constraints, identity, serialization, and networking into a behemoth that does none of those things well.

alexashka 5y ago

They are adding features they 'took' to put it kindly from other existing, mature implementations without giving any credit or acknowledgement. Not only that, they expect people to test their beta grade software because they keep releasing it half baked ever since the release of Swift itself. It's embarrassing and it also angers me because these companies have wall gardened their ecosystems to proprietary languages and tools that all do the same thing poorly, differently and in ways that prevent sane cross platform development, on purpose, this being yet another apple-only 'thing'. Here's Swift's roadmap: copy C# and other languages for the next 5 years while making sure you can't write cross platform code by adding arbitrary garbage like SwiftUI or this 'distributed actor' implementation that will surely differ and not be compatible with existing features of other languages and their tooling.

zenron 5y ago
Gosu's roadmap... copy .NET and Groovy Kotlin's roadmap... Copy Gosu and Groovy Java's roadmap... Make Gosu, Groovy and Kotlin redundant by supporting the idioms of Gosu and Kotlin eventually and force those languages to 'nativize' their underlying implementations. Manifold's roadmap... Ditch Gosu on the JVM and make a java library, copy all the stuff Java doesn't' have a plan for like .Net's (and by extension Gosu's) class extensions and java 8 to 9 workarounds We could go on and on. Nothing new under the sun. Great minds think alike and at the end of the day the value of delivering a product is what matters in the end.
- alexashka 5y ago
  Ah yes, that's exactly what the slave owners said before the civil war - look at the product we are delivering, and everyone else's doing it too! Their argument was so compelling that we decided to keep having slaves.
  - zenron 5y ago
    That might be the worst analogies I've ever heard. Humans extracting value asymmetrically out of captive humans has nothing to do with new syntactical features and/or sugar of other languages that language developers are inspired implement to implement in their own language because they solve modern workflow. And those developers are well compensated for for their contributions being by monetary, notoriety or self satisfactory means.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
> without giving any credit or acknowledgement You could be forgiven for not being familiar with the Actor model. But if you’re familiar with it, saying that isn’t recognition is bonkers. Everyone who knows what Actors are knows they’re referencing Erlang/OTP.
- ProfHewitt 5y ago
  The Actor Paradigm is much more widespread with offerings from Microsoft, Lightbend, etc.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  The model even predates that. It’s like one of the OG concurrency ideas IIRC.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rimliu 5y ago
We get it, you know nothing about Swift, but hate it.
freck 5y ago
This blog post is an announcement for a wide audience. In the proposal[1], which gives detail on motivations and implementation, there is an "Acknowledgements & Prior Art" section that mentions Akka, Orleans, Erlang, and Elixir. [1]: https://github.com/ktoso/swift-evolution/blob/distributed-revised/proposals/nnnn-distributed-actors.md#acknowledgments-prior-art https://github.com/ktoso/swift-evolution/blob/distributed-re...
- alexashka 5y ago
  Ah yes, they acknowledge it in a sentence down on page 37 in a document only people paid by apple read top to bottom. Thank you. That really changes things.

louthy 5y ago

> Orleans for dotnet Also Akka for .NET and my echo-process library [1] https://github.com/louthy/echo-process https://github.com/louthy/echo-process