Of course, if you want a very efficient application, you are completely right. But the thing is that with Swift you can get a Java like performance (which is pr

Of course, if you want a very efficient application, you are completely right. But the thing is that with Swift you can get a Java like performance (which is pretty good) out-of-the-box even while paying the ref-counting penalty, without the Java memory penalty (it has a low memory footprint) and without having to run it all with a external VM. Of course, if you want to catch-up with the average speed of C++ you will need some effort, but knowing that it will be pretty fast without much effort and without all the other penalties is reassuring.