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Swift certainly can be a scripting language. #!/usr/bin/env swift print("hello, world!")

• meindnoch 4y ago
  Of course, but so can C++ and Java: https://stackoverflow.com/a/29709521 https://stackoverflow.com/a/29709521
  • musicale 4y ago
    Implicit main in Swift means you don't need "public static void main..." or other boilerplate. No reason why Java and C++ couldn't do something similar though.
    • astrange 4y ago
      Top level programming is actually a little too surprising in Swift. For instance, you can access variables before they're declared - so you're not just implicitly inside a main function.
  • runjake 4y ago
    Right, but unlike C++ and Java, the scriptability of Swift was designed by spec. It's not a hack or convolution.
    • teh64 4y ago
      Java being used as a script is now also built in (since Java 11 in 2018): https://nipafx.dev/scripting-java-shebang/ https://nipafx.dev/scripting-java-shebang/
• musicale 4y ago
  That's kind of one of Swift's things - it is designed to be as accessible as a scripting language but scalable to full applications and system software. Ideally it gives you some of the convenience and accessibility of a language like Python, combined with runtime efficiency of a language like Objective-C. print("hello, world") is a cute example since it's a valid program in both Python and Swift. (Though I still haven't forgiven Python for removing the print statement, which dates back to BASIC antiquity.)