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Of the opposite.. there’s soo much hate against Apple and all their contributions. But somehow Google, Meta, annd Microsoft are better represented. Swift solve

Of the opposite.. there’s soo much hate against Apple and all their contributions. But somehow Google, Meta, annd Microsoft are better represented. Swift solves a problem that is still there. It was also released before the final release of Rust. It’s just that people seem to think that because it’s from Apple, it’s only meant for iOS/macOS. I love swift, it combines so many things, and Apple is really good get pushing the language forward with its compilers/warnings. I’m also using it for shell scripts and small utils, and it’s really great. I made https://github.com/jrz/container-shell https://github.com/jrz/container-shell to improve the experience of scripting cli tools in Swift.

bobbylarrybobby 1y ago
I'm fairness, when Swift was first released it was basically Apple devices only. It took forever for Foundation to get ported to other platforms (and good luck writing anything useful without Foundation).
- miffy900 1y ago
  Yes this exactly. People are also conveniently ignoring or forgetting that Apple kept changing the ABI for Swift binaries - it wasn't until 'v5' did they lock it down. Objective-C is 30+ years old and only once had this issue with the ObjC 2.0 release. Really, Swift v5 was the real v1.0 release because it was at that version Swift was truly ready for primetime.
- Someone 1y ago
  When C#/.NET was first released it was basically Windows devices only, too. First release: 2000, cross-platform and opened up in 2014, if I’m reading Wikipedia correctly. When Android was first released it was basically Android devices only, too. Still is.
bigyabai 1y ago
They deserve it. Look, Microsoft and Meta and Google are all evil companies too, but all of them actually make good-faith contributions to Open Source projects. Meta maintains React.js and Zstd, Microsoft does tons of open work on Typescript, VS Code and the Linux Kernel. Google handles the AOSP, Blink Engine, Go, Angular, JAX, Grpc... the list goes on. They're brimming with genuine, self-evident goodwill, even when their businesses detract from humanity. So; what exactly are Apple's big, selfless contributions? XNU is Source Availible but unusable without buying proprietary Apple hardware. iBoot is mysterious and has to be reverse-engineered to use it like UEFI. Open standards like Vulkan are ignored for political reasons, CUPS is basically derelict, WebKit killed KHTML because sharing was too hard, and APFS and Metal are still both undocumented despite promised transparency. CoreML is proprietary but can't compete with CUDA, iPads can't use QEMU despite supporting it in-hardware, all the Apple Silicon DeviceTree code is private, competing runtimes like Corellium get sued and security researchers get ignored. Swift, as an offering to the Open Source community, is a punch line at the end of a 20 year long gag. Apple does genuinely nothing to advance the wellbeing of common computing for mankind. Apple leaves behind no charitable contributions to anything that does not ensure their absolute preservation as a business. Combined with the proven anticompetitive damages that the App Store incurs on the burgeoning mobile market, they are unequivocally a net-negative force and aren't hated enough for their parasitic influence on global software production.
- belmont_sup 1y ago
  You make a convincing case.
- blackqueeriroh 1y ago
  And yet, they make the best damn computers out there with hardware second to none, make the single best consumer-level AI computer, are better at product design than basically anyone in the world, and have defined at least four different product categories, while donating billions of dollars to truly charitable causes and being more clearly committed to sustainability than any of their other large tech giants. I think I can handle their stance on software,
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    Well, your first three claims are subjective and your second two claims are something both Meta, Microsoft and Google have all done themselves. I was focusing more on what made Apple unique, not why people want to exonerate them so desperately. Your could use the same defense to protect Facebook and nobody could objectively disprove you. Cause like... we could start judging companies based on how many carbon credits they buy. But that wouldn't make Microsoft or Apple or Google any less evil, so it's a non-sequitur. Apple can simultaneously mass-produce the most desirable hardware in the world while creating anticompetitive market conditions that debilitates fair choice and destroys legitimate value. The United States threatened to break up Microsoft for the same overreach.

bobbylarrybobby 1y ago

I'm fairness, when Swift was first released it was basically Apple devices only. It took forever for Foundation to get ported to other platforms (and good luck writing anything useful without Foundation).

miffy900 1y ago
Yes this exactly. People are also conveniently ignoring or forgetting that Apple kept changing the ABI for Swift binaries - it wasn't until 'v5' did they lock it down. Objective-C is 30+ years old and only once had this issue with the ObjC 2.0 release. Really, Swift v5 was the real v1.0 release because it was at that version Swift was truly ready for primetime.
Someone 1y ago
When C#/.NET was first released it was basically Windows devices only, too. First release: 2000, cross-platform and opened up in 2014, if I’m reading Wikipedia correctly. When Android was first released it was basically Android devices only, too. Still is.

bigyabai 1y ago

They deserve it. Look, Microsoft and Meta and Google are all evil companies too, but all of them actually make good-faith contributions to Open Source projects. Meta maintains React.js and Zstd, Microsoft does tons of open work on Typescript, VS Code and the Linux Kernel. Google handles the AOSP, Blink Engine, Go, Angular, JAX, Grpc... the list goes on. They're brimming with genuine, self-evident goodwill, even when their businesses detract from humanity. So; what exactly are Apple's big, selfless contributions? XNU is Source Availible but unusable without buying proprietary Apple hardware. iBoot is mysterious and has to be reverse-engineered to use it like UEFI. Open standards like Vulkan are ignored for political reasons, CUPS is basically derelict, WebKit killed KHTML because sharing was too hard, and APFS and Metal are still both undocumented despite promised transparency. CoreML is proprietary but can't compete with CUDA, iPads can't use QEMU despite supporting it in-hardware, all the Apple Silicon DeviceTree code is private, competing runtimes like Corellium get sued and security researchers get ignored. Swift, as an offering to the Open Source community, is a punch line at the end of a 20 year long gag. Apple does genuinely nothing to advance the wellbeing of common computing for mankind. Apple leaves behind no charitable contributions to anything that does not ensure their absolute preservation as a business. Combined with the proven anticompetitive damages that the App Store incurs on the burgeoning mobile market, they are unequivocally a net-negative force and aren't hated enough for their parasitic influence on global software production.

belmont_sup 1y ago
You make a convincing case.
blackqueeriroh 1y ago
And yet, they make the best damn computers out there with hardware second to none, make the single best consumer-level AI computer, are better at product design than basically anyone in the world, and have defined at least four different product categories, while donating billions of dollars to truly charitable causes and being more clearly committed to sustainability than any of their other large tech giants. I think I can handle their stance on software,
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Well, your first three claims are subjective and your second two claims are something both Meta, Microsoft and Google have all done themselves. I was focusing more on what made Apple unique, not why people want to exonerate them so desperately. Your could use the same defense to protect Facebook and nobody could objectively disprove you. Cause like... we could start judging companies based on how many carbon credits they buy. But that wouldn't make Microsoft or Apple or Google any less evil, so it's a non-sequitur. Apple can simultaneously mass-produce the most desirable hardware in the world while creating anticompetitive market conditions that debilitates fair choice and destroys legitimate value. The United States threatened to break up Microsoft for the same overreach.