4 ms·

Apple's goal may be is to create a SW ecosystem that mostly only works on Macs. If a Swift application could be easily compiled to run on Windows, it would be

Apple's goal may be is to create a SW ecosystem that mostly only works on Macs. If a Swift application could be easily compiled to run on Windows, it would be much easier for Apple users to switch to Windows or Linux. And if Swift apps would run happily on all platforms Apple would still have an incentive to make them run fastest on Macs. Therefore it is not a good idea to rely on a computer manufacturer to provide you with a programming language.

jchw 4y ago
Microsoft has plenty of conflicts of interest to contend with, but that hasn't stopped them from being able to make some inroads towards appealing to other platforms. Perhaps it would be unwise to trust that they've "changed" and invest in Microsoft tools or ecosystems, but it's beside the point: I think it's fair to say that Visual Studio Code and TypeScript have achieved widespread success across the board. I think that Apple could still make Swift a success outside of their own ecosystem if they wanted to. It would probably have a lot of benefits for them to do so too, but they're all pretty long-game gambles (not to mention quite large investments, too.)
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Yeah, but if you want top tooling for .NET, the answer is still pretty much Visual Studio on Windows. The cross platform version of .NET and VS4Mac/VSCode only support a subset of the whole development experience. Many libraries on the ecosystem are still stuck in .NET Framework, wrappers for COM libraries, or plain Windows APIs, given its Windows focus between 2001 - 2016. If you want a Visual Studio like experience without everything that is still missing from VS4Mac/VSCode then you need to shell out for a JetBrains Rider license. Mostly because of the Windows/Visual Studio interests versus Azure folks interests.
  - jchw 4y ago
    Exactly! Microsoft has basically been stifling .NET adoption across platforms. The community reception was really poor when they took away live reload from the CLI, and it was equally bad when they restricted debugging functionality to only the Visual Studio of family products. These things have contributed to fairly limited adoption of .NET outside of the Microsoft ecosystem. What's crazy is that in .NET's case, Microsoft has it a lot more "free" because the community is willing to go great lengths to just do it themselves. Like for example, the entire Mono ecosystem: MonoDevelop, Xamarin, Unity, etc. has proven quite successful. Now that Roslyn is open source, it should easily overtake Mono... but it hasn't really. .NET is basically a cautionary tale. It's pretty amusing that the same company that made TypeScript and VSCode popular across platforms is having strategic trouble doing the same for their wildly sought after CLR/.NET ecosystem.

jchw 4y ago

Microsoft has plenty of conflicts of interest to contend with, but that hasn't stopped them from being able to make some inroads towards appealing to other platforms. Perhaps it would be unwise to trust that they've "changed" and invest in Microsoft tools or ecosystems, but it's beside the point: I think it's fair to say that Visual Studio Code and TypeScript have achieved widespread success across the board. I think that Apple could still make Swift a success outside of their own ecosystem if they wanted to. It would probably have a lot of benefits for them to do so too, but they're all pretty long-game gambles (not to mention quite large investments, too.)

pjmlp 4y ago
Yeah, but if you want top tooling for .NET, the answer is still pretty much Visual Studio on Windows. The cross platform version of .NET and VS4Mac/VSCode only support a subset of the whole development experience. Many libraries on the ecosystem are still stuck in .NET Framework, wrappers for COM libraries, or plain Windows APIs, given its Windows focus between 2001 - 2016. If you want a Visual Studio like experience without everything that is still missing from VS4Mac/VSCode then you need to shell out for a JetBrains Rider license. Mostly because of the Windows/Visual Studio interests versus Azure folks interests.
- jchw 4y ago
  Exactly! Microsoft has basically been stifling .NET adoption across platforms. The community reception was really poor when they took away live reload from the CLI, and it was equally bad when they restricted debugging functionality to only the Visual Studio of family products. These things have contributed to fairly limited adoption of .NET outside of the Microsoft ecosystem. What's crazy is that in .NET's case, Microsoft has it a lot more "free" because the community is willing to go great lengths to just do it themselves. Like for example, the entire Mono ecosystem: MonoDevelop, Xamarin, Unity, etc. has proven quite successful. Now that Roslyn is open source, it should easily overtake Mono... but it hasn't really. .NET is basically a cautionary tale. It's pretty amusing that the same company that made TypeScript and VSCode popular across platforms is having strategic trouble doing the same for their wildly sought after CLR/.NET ecosystem.