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What happened to Swift ? I used to hear so much about it -- now not so much. Maybe I'm in my echo chamber ?

by sidkshatriya 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago
Mostly likely your echo chamber is outside Apple developer ecosystem? Swift is doing great.
- jtrueb 2y ago
  ??? Swift is terrible right now. Language features conflicting, async story migrating, compile issues horrific and IDE support in its infancy.
  - jmull 2y ago
    I haven't noticed particular issues. I would hardly say perfect, but it's regular headaches.
    - jtrueb 2y ago
      How many years old is your swift codebase?
    - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
      I’ve not had much trouble either, not recently anyway. The transition from v1 → v2 → v3 was rough, but that’s par for the course when you’re an early adopter. The new async model looks like a bit of a bear, but that’s why there’s a toggle for it that works on a per-module level so you can incrementally adopt it whenever you see fit. Honestly I’ve had more pain out of the Kotlin/Android experience in the past several years. If Swift suddenly became a tier 1 language option there I’d switch right away.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Most Objective-C codebases are brown field development. Apple themselves, the only framework that they started from scratch in recent years was Metal, and even there only die hards use Objective-C instead of the Swift bindings. Could be better, it isn't as bad as you make it to be, for a language whose design goals are to replace C, C++ and Objective-C for Apple.
    - jtrueb 2y ago
      Having worked on the old, the migrating, and the new, I appreciate Swift more than Objective-C mostly due to IDE support. If they had put the effort into Objective-C++ that they put into Swift, I struggle to imagine it in a worse place than Swift is in these days.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Any language that is copy-paste compatible with C is a lost cause in regards to security. From language features and community culture point of view.
        jtrueb 2y ago
        I think that is a bit of an overstatement given the amount of legacy code and bindings generation capabilities. I do think it had to swing towards memory safe and C++ still didn’t have a plan for smart pointers much less move semantics when Swift dev started. Who knows what present day Objective-C++ could have been if it had been the workhorse language of choice. Maybe this profiles thing Bjarne is pushing could have been in the roadmap. We will never know.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        Not at all, besides Objective-C would have been dead by now, had it not been for NeXT reverse acquisition of Apple. Additionally Objective-C++ never was seen anything beyond interop with existing C++ code, and only old timers like myself have its documentation, you will hardly find anything about it on Apple's documentation nowadays.

What happened to Swift ? I used to hear so much about it -- now not so much. Maybe I'm in my echo chamber ?

pjmlp 2y ago

Mostly likely your echo chamber is outside Apple developer ecosystem? Swift is doing great.

jtrueb 2y ago
??? Swift is terrible right now. Language features conflicting, async story migrating, compile issues horrific and IDE support in its infancy.
- jmull 2y ago
  I haven't noticed particular issues. I would hardly say perfect, but it's regular headaches.
  - jtrueb 2y ago
    How many years old is your swift codebase?
  - cosmic_cheese 2y ago
    I’ve not had much trouble either, not recently anyway. The transition from v1 → v2 → v3 was rough, but that’s par for the course when you’re an early adopter. The new async model looks like a bit of a bear, but that’s why there’s a toggle for it that works on a per-module level so you can incrementally adopt it whenever you see fit. Honestly I’ve had more pain out of the Kotlin/Android experience in the past several years. If Swift suddenly became a tier 1 language option there I’d switch right away.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Most Objective-C codebases are brown field development. Apple themselves, the only framework that they started from scratch in recent years was Metal, and even there only die hards use Objective-C instead of the Swift bindings. Could be better, it isn't as bad as you make it to be, for a language whose design goals are to replace C, C++ and Objective-C for Apple.
  - jtrueb 2y ago
    Having worked on the old, the migrating, and the new, I appreciate Swift more than Objective-C mostly due to IDE support. If they had put the effort into Objective-C++ that they put into Swift, I struggle to imagine it in a worse place than Swift is in these days.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Any language that is copy-paste compatible with C is a lost cause in regards to security. From language features and community culture point of view.
      - jtrueb 2y ago
        I think that is a bit of an overstatement given the amount of legacy code and bindings generation capabilities. I do think it had to swing towards memory safe and C++ still didn’t have a plan for smart pointers much less move semantics when Swift dev started. Who knows what present day Objective-C++ could have been if it had been the workhorse language of choice. Maybe this profiles thing Bjarne is pushing could have been in the roadmap. We will never know.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        Not at all, besides Objective-C would have been dead by now, had it not been for NeXT reverse acquisition of Apple. Additionally Objective-C++ never was seen anything beyond interop with existing C++ code, and only old timers like myself have its documentation, you will hardly find anything about it on Apple's documentation nowadays.