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I'm going to call it now: Swift on the backend is pointless for everyone but Apple, and trying to make it takeoff as a backend service language is as pointless

I'm going to call it now: Swift on the backend is pointless for everyone but Apple, and trying to make it takeoff as a backend service language is as pointless as porting Xcode cross platform and trying to lure non-Apple devs into using it over say VSCode, any JetBrains IDE or Visual Studio. The choices that already serve the market are just too numerous and the existing tooling is already far greater in features, functionality and capability than anything that Apple can provide. What's funny is that they actually have the money to dedicate resources to this space to compete with C#, Java, go or Rust, but they're not going to because it's just too far afield of their core business. Any backend service written in Swift is not going to be running on a Mac in the cloud, and probably won't be serving just iPhone/iPad clients exclusively, so why bother when we know Apple leadership will treat it as an afterthought. If it does takeoff, I'm betting it will be because the open source community provides a solution, not Apple and even then it will be in a tiny niche. Indeed, this entire project is enabled by Vapor, an open source Swift project that I'm guessing the team only chose because Vapor as a project finally reached the requisite level of maturity for what they wanted. It's not like Apple went out on their own and built their own web framework in Swift, like Microsoft does with C# and ASP.NET. All of this makes me feel even more skeptical about Swift on the backend. Apple won't do anything specifically to give Swift a legup in the backend space, beyond the basics, like porting Swift to linux, but will avail themselves of open source stuff that other people built.

jeremymcanally 1y ago
Apple certainly do have web frameworks they’ve written in Swift. No, I don’t know why they aren’t publicly available (at least yet). But I do know they power a number of public facing services.
georgeecollins 1y ago
I am really curious what people's take on Hacker News is of Swift. It feels like I heard about it more five years ago. People seem to like Go, Rust is cool (I learned that one), and Python, C#, Java seem here to stay. I mean I am asking as general purpose language, not just back end.
- MBCook 1y ago
  I really like it. It feels clean to me and easy to read, but has great async and other modern features. A bit like a compiled TypeScript without all the baggage that comes from JS’s existence. It has its issues in places, mostly the compiler, but I love getting to develop in it. I suspect you hear less about it because it’s no longer new and the open source community doesn’t seem to care about it that much, unlike Rust. It still seems to be viewed as “the iOS language” even though it can do more than that and is available on other platforms.
- dwaite 1y ago
  Rust and Swift share a lot of core concepts. Swift has a few extra bits for Objective-C compatibility (when running on Apple platforms), but otherwise the biggest differences come to design and ergonomics of the language itself. If I need complete control over memory for say a web server, or am writing code to run on an embedded device (e.g. without Linux), I'll use Rust - even if Swift technically has the features to meet my needs. Thats the reverse if I am creating mobile or desktop apps. I'd probably prefer using neither for web services like in this article, but would still probably pick Swift given a limited choice.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Fine language for anyone on Apple's ecosystem. If one rather be OS agnostic, then not so much.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  There was really big excitement about Swift everywhere, but Apple decided not to capitalize on it and hype died off. Swift is pretty much Mac/iOS language and there are no indications that it is going to change anytime soon.
- hu3 1y ago
  As for HN, I see comments about swift becoming complex and bloated with many ways to do the same thing. Like C++ish.
eviks 1y ago
> they're not going to because it's just too far afield of their core business Apple car was farther?
- hu3 1y ago
  and it's dead

jeremymcanally 1y ago

Apple certainly do have web frameworks they’ve written in Swift. No, I don’t know why they aren’t publicly available (at least yet). But I do know they power a number of public facing services.

georgeecollins 1y ago

I am really curious what people's take on Hacker News is of Swift. It feels like I heard about it more five years ago. People seem to like Go, Rust is cool (I learned that one), and Python, C#, Java seem here to stay. I mean I am asking as general purpose language, not just back end.

MBCook 1y ago
I really like it. It feels clean to me and easy to read, but has great async and other modern features. A bit like a compiled TypeScript without all the baggage that comes from JS’s existence. It has its issues in places, mostly the compiler, but I love getting to develop in it. I suspect you hear less about it because it’s no longer new and the open source community doesn’t seem to care about it that much, unlike Rust. It still seems to be viewed as “the iOS language” even though it can do more than that and is available on other platforms.
dwaite 1y ago
Rust and Swift share a lot of core concepts. Swift has a few extra bits for Objective-C compatibility (when running on Apple platforms), but otherwise the biggest differences come to design and ergonomics of the language itself. If I need complete control over memory for say a web server, or am writing code to run on an embedded device (e.g. without Linux), I'll use Rust - even if Swift technically has the features to meet my needs. Thats the reverse if I am creating mobile or desktop apps. I'd probably prefer using neither for web services like in this article, but would still probably pick Swift given a limited choice.
pjmlp 1y ago
Fine language for anyone on Apple's ecosystem. If one rather be OS agnostic, then not so much.
wiseowise 1y ago
There was really big excitement about Swift everywhere, but Apple decided not to capitalize on it and hype died off. Swift is pretty much Mac/iOS language and there are no indications that it is going to change anytime soon.
hu3 1y ago
As for HN, I see comments about swift becoming complex and bloated with many ways to do the same thing. Like C++ish.

eviks 1y ago

> they're not going to because it's just too far afield of their core business Apple car was farther?

hu3 1y ago
and it's dead