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Agreed that Swift looks quite amazing. There’s some cool talks on how they’re trying to move FoundationDB to Swift and their approach. I think the main problem

Agreed that Swift looks quite amazing. There’s some cool talks on how they’re trying to move FoundationDB to Swift and their approach. I think the main problem, and this is a really big problem, is that based on a very shallow investigation I did a couple months back, the ecosystem for server-side stuff barely exists. And in my opinion, the ecosystem is one of the deciding factors when picking a language.

jkelleyrtp 2y ago
I have a slight inkling that Apple internally is using Swift for backend stuff somewhere, especially with all the ML stuff they just shipped. Word on the street is their datacenters are full of M-series chips. I could see those servers running Swift + distributed actors + mlx. The move to make swift run on Linux could be part of that work - their sysadmins, devops, and backend folks probably use Vim/VSCode and deploy on Linux. We might see the release of a very good backend framework by apple for Swift that works on Mac/Linux. The new macros they added kinda bolt on serde into the language too - and the distributed actor stuff is basically RPC in the language.
- manmal 2y ago
  Yes their “private cloud” runs on Swift, which supposedly increases security because they believe Swift has things nailed by now.
- Klonoar 2y ago
  I believe it’s confirmed that they’re doing it with Swift, buried somewhere in the ML post IIRC.
- MBCook 2y ago
  Apple deploys a ton of their server stuff on Linux. Plus they appear to be doing all new code in Swift and moving old code over slowly. They’re also using embedded Swift in the Secure Enclaves and other small processors due to its safety, though I think they have an extra layer of automated security checking that they use internally that doesn’t exist in the public builds. But in short, yes. I believe they’re trying to use Swift for everything at this point and getting away from C/C++/whatever even for kernel work.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Most server code Apple writes is Java. They are slowly trying out Swift, but it's not really correct to say that all new code is Swift.

jkelleyrtp 2y ago

I have a slight inkling that Apple internally is using Swift for backend stuff somewhere, especially with all the ML stuff they just shipped. Word on the street is their datacenters are full of M-series chips. I could see those servers running Swift + distributed actors + mlx. The move to make swift run on Linux could be part of that work - their sysadmins, devops, and backend folks probably use Vim/VSCode and deploy on Linux. We might see the release of a very good backend framework by apple for Swift that works on Mac/Linux. The new macros they added kinda bolt on serde into the language too - and the distributed actor stuff is basically RPC in the language.

manmal 2y ago
Yes their “private cloud” runs on Swift, which supposedly increases security because they believe Swift has things nailed by now.
Klonoar 2y ago
I believe it’s confirmed that they’re doing it with Swift, buried somewhere in the ML post IIRC.
MBCook 2y ago
Apple deploys a ton of their server stuff on Linux. Plus they appear to be doing all new code in Swift and moving old code over slowly. They’re also using embedded Swift in the Secure Enclaves and other small processors due to its safety, though I think they have an extra layer of automated security checking that they use internally that doesn’t exist in the public builds. But in short, yes. I believe they’re trying to use Swift for everything at this point and getting away from C/C++/whatever even for kernel work.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Most server code Apple writes is Java. They are slowly trying out Swift, but it's not really correct to say that all new code is Swift.