Just glanced thru the Swift book in about 3 hours. Conclusion: all your programming language are belong to Swift, mostly stolen good ideas, some innovations, a

Just glanced thru the Swift book in about 3 hours. Conclusion: all your programming language are belong to Swift, mostly stolen good ideas, some innovations, a few gripes. I can say Swift takes inspiration and improves on at least these languages: C: typealias struct control structures labeled statements AKA gotos varargs C++: default arguments class instance construction syntax // comment superclass, implementing protocol declaration syntax semi-virtual class init, deinit Go: No parentheses around the condition part of control statements Unicode identifiers shorthand for signed and unsigned integer types U?Int(8|16|32|64) C#: in-out params properties subscript access of class member values Objective-C: ARC protocols extensions param names as method names willSet/didSet nil? Java: enum @final super keyword override method keyword Scala: Local type-inference, blend of an ML flavored FP with OOP without the noise and believe it or not, even more powerful in specifying generic type constraints. No stupid JVM type erasures either so you can actually create an instance of a generic type, just like C++ templates. Self: self Python: for i in enumerate(seq) for key, value in dictionary Type(value) explicit type conversion syntax No public/private/protected class member access modifier bullshit Array literals, dictionary is also like Python but use [] instead of {} Ruby: 0..100, 100_000 Lisp: closures Scheme, Coffeescript: ? optional type modifier Bash: $0, $1... inside short callback closures Innovations --------------- break-less switch, optional fall-thru, comma as multiple case, case can be any value of any type, condition or a type constraint for pattern matching, supports method call shorthand generic type constraint queries overflow operators @prefix, @postfix, @infix, @assignment modifiers for operator overloading Trailing closure as partial function application Gripes ------ Seems like array[4..6] is even more useless than Javascript's Array#slice, and a far cry from Python's slices. No set literals and list/set/dict comprehension. Nothing for concurrency???? No yield, no generators, no channels, not even the synchronized keyword. There's no decorator or annotations, and Swift isn't Objective-C, what's with the odd-ball @ modifiers? I don't see namespaces as mentioned in the WWDC slides, and goto is definitely still here so you might just write another gotofail. Looks like Swift is Apple's answer to Go, Rust, Scala, Java, PyObjC/RubyMotion, Unity, Xamarin and all these HTML5 + JS/Phonegap people. I'll definitely pay attention to Swift. If the performance results hold up, Swift + iOS8 will definitely leave Android's ancient Java 5 crap way out in the dust. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/swift-programming-language/id881256329?mt=11 https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/swift-programming-language/...