4 ms·

It is my belief that Apple is working on a new language (2010)

72 points by Doctor_Fegg 12y ago

TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
Prescient.
slaven 12y ago
Well, except the work on the new language according to the language creator didn't start until July 2010, a month after this post.
- wootest 12y ago
  Yes, I may have been wrong on that part. Or it was planned but not started yet. Or Chris Lattner read that post and thought "we've gotta get on that". Or whatever. Regardless of that, a lot of details match (opt into it, side-by-side with C and Objective-C, compiler based on LLVM, not based on C, modern language, specifically made to match the frameworks).
Doctor_Fegg 12y ago
The timing's interesting on this one. The blog post is from 19th June 2010; Chris Lattner says he started working on Swift in July 2010, "with only a few people knowing of its existence", but presumably with some approval from higher-ups.
- Kaizyn 12y ago
  Perhaps it was a self-fulfilling prophecy? Chris read the blog post and decided to start working on a new language... and the rest has been history.
  - huxley 12y ago
    To be fair, John Siracusa has been beating that drum for a long time: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/06/copland-2010-revisited/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/06/copland-2010-revisited/
    - wootest 12y ago
      I love Siracusa, but what he's been saying is "well, they're gonna need something or they'll fall behind". Which is a fine bet and was a prescient analysis even in the rounds before. Copland 2010 was his idea in 2005 that they'd essentially have something new and modern by 2010, which they didn't, but they had started evolving Objective-C again and added GC, so they hadn't been completely standing around. I made a separate bet, saying that "they're working on a new language with these characteristics". For four years, this was an insane idea, they're not going to go all that trouble just to chuck Objective-C, I was mad and should be ignored. This week, that line of dismissal argument changed into "in hindsight, he was only stating the painfully obvious and anyone could have done that", which is nice and weird and a reversal fit for Steve Jobs. That said, both Siracusa and I completely missed ARC, which is basically probably what made Swift worthwhile.
mikeash 12y ago
Speculation on a new language from Apple has been going on for ages. Lots of people have discussed the possibility for years. There are no details in this prediction beyond "a new language", some obvious stuff like "it'll be modern", and some wrong stuff like the implication that it will use garbage collection. This is not a very interesting prediction. Just coincidental, and not particularly so.
- cefstat 12y ago
  Moreover, the specific predictions turned out to be wrong: Swift has no garbage collection (ARC is not GC), and is not a completely clean slate but is using the ObjC runtime.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Most CS books about GC algorithms reserve chapter 1 for RC.
  - wootest 12y ago
    No points for "based on LLVM" and "opt-in as you please side by side with Objective-C"? (Side by side with Objective-C probably does not require the Obj-C runtime, but it's hard to see how it wouldn't want to use it.) I did not predict ARC. I'm not a genius, oracle, memory management expert or compiler writer.
TillE 12y ago
Given the sheer quantity of people who post their thoughts about Apple, you can probably find one or two who made an accurate prediction about any product release.
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  It's almost like Shakespeare's monkeys! :)
  - skizm 12y ago
    "The relevance of the theorem is questionable—the probability of a universe full of monkeys typing a complete work such as Shakespeare's Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low (but technically not zero)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
    - Thirdegree 12y ago
      But it's not about "a universe full of monkeys", it's about Infinite monkeys. Significantly more.
      - Lerc 12y ago
        For some values of universe anyway.
      - coldcode 12y ago
        Infinite monkeys would also produce infinite crap. Infinity means everything is going to happen.
        huxley 12y ago
        As in poop or as in Dan Brown novels?
abalone 12y ago
So the thesis is the only reason they would switch to LLVM is if they wanted to abstract away from Objective-C? I'm no compiler expert but I do know Apple rolled out Automatic Reference Counting in 2011 (one year after this post), a pretty f'ing massive compiler-based feature. That was probably the biggest leap forward in Objective-C in a decade. For those not familiar, that's the thing that automates memory management but without the runtime overhead of garbage collection, instead using static code analysis to figure out where to compile in the commands to release memory. So I'm guessing LLVM had something to do with that.
- stusmall 12y ago
  ARC uses runtime reference counting, as the name would imply, not static code analysis.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    And it's nothing particularly special. Automatic reference counting has been going on since the 1950s. There's even an AI Koan about it. It's a nice addition to Objective-C but it's nothing new.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Clang uses dataflow analysis to remove redundant increment/decrement operations. There was even a WWDC session about it when ARC was made available.
    - puppetmaster3 12y ago
      pjmlp, can you please contact me re d? cekvenich.vic (at) gmail.com
      - pjmlp 12y ago
        Why?
- kannanvijayan 12y ago
vlunkr 12y ago
If you look down into the comments (on the original post), he says "My guess for what xlang would actually look like is rather close to Objective-C without the C." Pretty good prediction considering they used almost the same phrase in the announcement.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

72 points by Doctor_Fegg 12y ago

Prescient.

Well, except the work on the new language according to the language creator didn't start until July 2010, a month after this post.

wootest 12y ago
Yes, I may have been wrong on that part. Or it was planned but not started yet. Or Chris Lattner read that post and thought "we've gotta get on that". Or whatever. Regardless of that, a lot of details match (opt into it, side-by-side with C and Objective-C, compiler based on LLVM, not based on C, modern language, specifically made to match the frameworks).

Doctor_Fegg 12y ago

The timing's interesting on this one. The blog post is from 19th June 2010; Chris Lattner says he started working on Swift in July 2010, "with only a few people knowing of its existence", but presumably with some approval from higher-ups.

Kaizyn 12y ago
Perhaps it was a self-fulfilling prophecy? Chris read the blog post and decided to start working on a new language... and the rest has been history.
- huxley 12y ago
  To be fair, John Siracusa has been beating that drum for a long time: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/06/copland-2010-revisited/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/06/copland-2010-revisited/
  - wootest 12y ago
    I love Siracusa, but what he's been saying is "well, they're gonna need something or they'll fall behind". Which is a fine bet and was a prescient analysis even in the rounds before. Copland 2010 was his idea in 2005 that they'd essentially have something new and modern by 2010, which they didn't, but they had started evolving Objective-C again and added GC, so they hadn't been completely standing around. I made a separate bet, saying that "they're working on a new language with these characteristics". For four years, this was an insane idea, they're not going to go all that trouble just to chuck Objective-C, I was mad and should be ignored. This week, that line of dismissal argument changed into "in hindsight, he was only stating the painfully obvious and anyone could have done that", which is nice and weird and a reversal fit for Steve Jobs. That said, both Siracusa and I completely missed ARC, which is basically probably what made Swift worthwhile.

mikeash 12y ago

Speculation on a new language from Apple has been going on for ages. Lots of people have discussed the possibility for years. There are no details in this prediction beyond "a new language", some obvious stuff like "it'll be modern", and some wrong stuff like the implication that it will use garbage collection. This is not a very interesting prediction. Just coincidental, and not particularly so.

cefstat 12y ago
Moreover, the specific predictions turned out to be wrong: Swift has no garbage collection (ARC is not GC), and is not a completely clean slate but is using the ObjC runtime.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Most CS books about GC algorithms reserve chapter 1 for RC.
- wootest 12y ago
  No points for "based on LLVM" and "opt-in as you please side by side with Objective-C"? (Side by side with Objective-C probably does not require the Obj-C runtime, but it's hard to see how it wouldn't want to use it.) I did not predict ARC. I'm not a genius, oracle, memory management expert or compiler writer.

TillE 12y ago

Given the sheer quantity of people who post their thoughts about Apple, you can probably find one or two who made an accurate prediction about any product release.

hkmurakami 12y ago
It's almost like Shakespeare's monkeys! :)
- skizm 12y ago
  "The relevance of the theorem is questionable—the probability of a universe full of monkeys typing a complete work such as Shakespeare's Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low (but technically not zero)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
  - Thirdegree 12y ago
    But it's not about "a universe full of monkeys", it's about Infinite monkeys. Significantly more.
    - Lerc 12y ago
      For some values of universe anyway.
    - coldcode 12y ago
      Infinite monkeys would also produce infinite crap. Infinity means everything is going to happen.
      - huxley 12y ago
        As in poop or as in Dan Brown novels?

abalone 12y ago

So the thesis is the only reason they would switch to LLVM is if they wanted to abstract away from Objective-C? I'm no compiler expert but I do know Apple rolled out Automatic Reference Counting in 2011 (one year after this post), a pretty f'ing massive compiler-based feature. That was probably the biggest leap forward in Objective-C in a decade. For those not familiar, that's the thing that automates memory management but without the runtime overhead of garbage collection, instead using static code analysis to figure out where to compile in the commands to release memory. So I'm guessing LLVM had something to do with that.

stusmall 12y ago
ARC uses runtime reference counting, as the name would imply, not static code analysis.
- mikeash 12y ago
  And it's nothing particularly special. Automatic reference counting has been going on since the 1950s. There's even an AI Koan about it. It's a nice addition to Objective-C but it's nothing new.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Clang uses dataflow analysis to remove redundant increment/decrement operations. There was even a WWDC session about it when ARC was made available.
  - puppetmaster3 12y ago
    pjmlp, can you please contact me re d? cekvenich.vic (at) gmail.com
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      Why?
kannanvijayan 12y ago

vlunkr 12y ago

If you look down into the comments (on the original post), he says "My guess for what xlang would actually look like is rather close to Objective-C without the C." Pretty good prediction considering they used almost the same phrase in the announcement.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]