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Correct me if I'm wrong, but adoption of "server-side" (aka non-App) Swift by people who weren't already Mac/iOS app developers seems to have been microscopic.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but adoption of "server-side" (aka non-App) Swift by people who weren't already Mac/iOS app developers seems to have been microscopic. Surely the language must be considered a colossal failure in that regard, because the goals espoused in the early years went far beyond just being an Apple person language. (Or to summarise the situation in another way, it got mercilessly shunned in terms of wider community enthusiasm versus Rust)

seec 3y ago
Considering Apple's approach to most things it seems about right. Even if the language was extremely good and better at many non-Apple stuff, you would still be right to question its viability. Apple doing what is best for Apple regardless of what people need or what you could expect from a reasonable partner is the only reason you need to not bother with swift anywhere else than on Apple hardware. This is a company that switched off the ability to execute 32bits software on hardware that was natively capable just with an arbitrary OS update. I used to be very naive, but I would not rely on anything Apple that is not clearly linked to their hardware (so that their interest at least somewhat aligne with yours). Nowadays I would go as far as saying that if you do not directly make money from using Apple hardware, you should not bother at all. I believe most end up learning this either the hard way or by simple observation ; and one cannot come to any other conclusion than avoid Apple stuff outside of Apple hardware...
nickpeterson 3y ago
I seem to remember something about the original designer leaving Apple and a bit of bad blood but I might be misremembering.
- b3morales 3y ago
  You are probably thinking of this by Chris Lattner: https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgroup/55455/6 https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgr... (on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30416070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30416070) Swift has always been developed by a team of course, but he was the lead and probably the most public face.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    Swift is pretty clearly Lattner's baby. It's not usual for language parents to just stick around indefinitely, Bjarne Stroustrup's helicopter parenting of C++ is the exception not the rule. You won't find Kernighan at WG14 meetings, Eich isn't a key member of TC39, Hoare isn't in Rust's core team. van Rossum was BDFL for over 20 years, but did give it up. I am reminded of the Black Mirror episode "Arkangel". Children are their own people, they're meant to go into the world and be themselves. A programming language isn't a person but its destiny is distinct from yours, and it deserves the opportunity to be its own thing and develop without you hovering over it constantly.
    - dogleash 3y ago
      Did you just use analogy to childrearing as way to shame creators who bring in collaborators but then don't fuck off fast enough? That's some A-tier manipulation tactics.
      - tialaramex 3y ago
        Mostly I was just snarking at Bjarne. My take is, Bjane wanted 1980s Unix programmers to like his semicolon language because it was kinda-sorta C compatible, but most of them didn't. And so, he's been trying to change their minds for ~40 years. It's not OK to still be here in 2023 trying to make it happen, a lot of them have retired, some of them are dead, it's not going to happen.
        frou_dh 3y ago
        I seriously doubt he feels a gratification deficit, given how far and wide C++'s use for serious projects has been.
        suby 3y ago
        This feels like a needlessly hostile take. As someone who uses C++ daily, I am glad Bjarne is still around and contributing to the language.
        3y ago
oflannabhra 3y ago
Yes, Swift is definitely losing the mindshare race for server side compiled languages, but to be fair it started way behind. However, just because it is not winning mindshare doesn't mean it isn't useable or that it is a failure. The real story of server side Swift is a small but dedicated working group [0] continuing to make real measurable progress. Most of the frameworks have fallen out of favor or have been abandoned, except for Vapor, but the workgroup is active with representatives from several major tech companies. Obviously the workgroup's scope is much broader than just a single framework, and their current initiatives identify and address most of the shortcomings noted in the article. [1] [0] - https://www.swift.org/sswg/ https://www.swift.org/sswg/ [1] - https://www.swift.org/blog/sswg-update-2023/ https://www.swift.org/blog/sswg-update-2023/
- ezekiel68 3y ago
  > However, just because it is not winning mindshare doesn't mean it isn't useable or that it is a failure. A supposedly wise man once said "...you can not fool all of the people all of the time." [0] Plenty of things that are usable are also failures (e.g. Microsoft Zune was, by all accounts, a competent media device). Any technology that is not winning [sufficient] mindshare over time will be considered a failure soon enough. [0] What, you don't know who said this? Copy pasta plus a three-second search on any search site or AI chat will set you straight.
  - oflannabhra 3y ago
    This seems pretty reductionist and zero-sum thinking. Taking your line of reasoning to its end, one would expect there to be a single web framework, and that is evidentially not the case. Additionally you are mixing current state with future state, and most of my comment was focused at the current state of server-side Swift. Defining "sufficient" here is important, and I think that server side Swift's progress meets a bar here that prevents it from being a failure. That might not last though.
pjmlp 3y ago
It can't be a failure when it never was a use case that Apple actually cared about. The Swift FOSS folks are the ones that have tried to look into it, as there is hardly any other use case outside Apple's ecosystem.
- jwells89 3y ago
  The team developing Arc browser seems to be making a lot of headway on making Swift work for native Windows development, which is promising. Not server side, but not Apple stuff either. If they succeed and open source their work I can see using it myself for Windows desktop development.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Tokamak folks are bringing SwiftUI to web and also to Android via SDL
davedx 3y ago
It’s a real shame the auto differentiation project wasn’t pushed harder.
fleeno 3y ago
I have like messing with server-side Swift, and I asked it at the WWDC Swift table. I was pretty much met with blank stares. Either they just have no interest in it, or I ran into the wrong engineers.

seec 3y ago

Considering Apple's approach to most things it seems about right. Even if the language was extremely good and better at many non-Apple stuff, you would still be right to question its viability. Apple doing what is best for Apple regardless of what people need or what you could expect from a reasonable partner is the only reason you need to not bother with swift anywhere else than on Apple hardware. This is a company that switched off the ability to execute 32bits software on hardware that was natively capable just with an arbitrary OS update. I used to be very naive, but I would not rely on anything Apple that is not clearly linked to their hardware (so that their interest at least somewhat aligne with yours). Nowadays I would go as far as saying that if you do not directly make money from using Apple hardware, you should not bother at all. I believe most end up learning this either the hard way or by simple observation ; and one cannot come to any other conclusion than avoid Apple stuff outside of Apple hardware...

nickpeterson 3y ago

I seem to remember something about the original designer leaving Apple and a bit of bad blood but I might be misremembering.

b3morales 3y ago
You are probably thinking of this by Chris Lattner: https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgroup/55455/6 https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgr... (on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30416070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30416070) Swift has always been developed by a team of course, but he was the lead and probably the most public face.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  Swift is pretty clearly Lattner's baby. It's not usual for language parents to just stick around indefinitely, Bjarne Stroustrup's helicopter parenting of C++ is the exception not the rule. You won't find Kernighan at WG14 meetings, Eich isn't a key member of TC39, Hoare isn't in Rust's core team. van Rossum was BDFL for over 20 years, but did give it up. I am reminded of the Black Mirror episode "Arkangel". Children are their own people, they're meant to go into the world and be themselves. A programming language isn't a person but its destiny is distinct from yours, and it deserves the opportunity to be its own thing and develop without you hovering over it constantly.
  - dogleash 3y ago
    Did you just use analogy to childrearing as way to shame creators who bring in collaborators but then don't fuck off fast enough? That's some A-tier manipulation tactics.
    - tialaramex 3y ago
      Mostly I was just snarking at Bjarne. My take is, Bjane wanted 1980s Unix programmers to like his semicolon language because it was kinda-sorta C compatible, but most of them didn't. And so, he's been trying to change their minds for ~40 years. It's not OK to still be here in 2023 trying to make it happen, a lot of them have retired, some of them are dead, it's not going to happen.
      - frou_dh 3y ago
        I seriously doubt he feels a gratification deficit, given how far and wide C++'s use for serious projects has been.
      - suby 3y ago
        This feels like a needlessly hostile take. As someone who uses C++ daily, I am glad Bjarne is still around and contributing to the language.
      - 3y ago

oflannabhra 3y ago

Yes, Swift is definitely losing the mindshare race for server side compiled languages, but to be fair it started way behind. However, just because it is not winning mindshare doesn't mean it isn't useable or that it is a failure. The real story of server side Swift is a small but dedicated working group [0] continuing to make real measurable progress. Most of the frameworks have fallen out of favor or have been abandoned, except for Vapor, but the workgroup is active with representatives from several major tech companies. Obviously the workgroup's scope is much broader than just a single framework, and their current initiatives identify and address most of the shortcomings noted in the article. [1] [0] - https://www.swift.org/sswg/ https://www.swift.org/sswg/ [1] - https://www.swift.org/blog/sswg-update-2023/ https://www.swift.org/blog/sswg-update-2023/

ezekiel68 3y ago
> However, just because it is not winning mindshare doesn't mean it isn't useable or that it is a failure. A supposedly wise man once said "...you can not fool all of the people all of the time." [0] Plenty of things that are usable are also failures (e.g. Microsoft Zune was, by all accounts, a competent media device). Any technology that is not winning [sufficient] mindshare over time will be considered a failure soon enough. [0] What, you don't know who said this? Copy pasta plus a three-second search on any search site or AI chat will set you straight.
- oflannabhra 3y ago
  This seems pretty reductionist and zero-sum thinking. Taking your line of reasoning to its end, one would expect there to be a single web framework, and that is evidentially not the case. Additionally you are mixing current state with future state, and most of my comment was focused at the current state of server-side Swift. Defining "sufficient" here is important, and I think that server side Swift's progress meets a bar here that prevents it from being a failure. That might not last though.

pjmlp 3y ago

It can't be a failure when it never was a use case that Apple actually cared about. The Swift FOSS folks are the ones that have tried to look into it, as there is hardly any other use case outside Apple's ecosystem.

jwells89 3y ago
The team developing Arc browser seems to be making a lot of headway on making Swift work for native Windows development, which is promising. Not server side, but not Apple stuff either. If they succeed and open source their work I can see using it myself for Windows desktop development.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Tokamak folks are bringing SwiftUI to web and also to Android via SDL

davedx 3y ago

It’s a real shame the auto differentiation project wasn’t pushed harder.

fleeno 3y ago

I have like messing with server-side Swift, and I asked it at the WWDC Swift table. I was pretty much met with blank stares. Either they just have no interest in it, or I ran into the wrong engineers.