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> because of their focus on secrecy, they're doomed to relearn all that we learned That's wrong, condescending and misses the point. Wrong because the develope
by sjwright 12y ago
> because of their focus on secrecy, they're doomed to relearn all that we learned
That's wrong, condescending and misses the point. Wrong because the developers were not cut off from learning what was learned by others. Condescending in the way it implies that there's a royal "we" of people that should be consulted whenever any programming language is conceived. And it misses the point because some types of learning are learned better by making the mistake yourself rather than accepting the wisdom of authorities.
Anyway, I don't see how Swift's life cycle is any different from other most other languages, except that its inevitable celebrity has been tempered by its parents' protectiveness. The number of people expressing interest in nurturing a language in its formative stages grows in proportion to its viability. Swift went from experiment to viable as soon as it got chosen as the path forward from ObjC.
> just an hour long conversation could've made a big difference
Apple has huge numbers of programmers on staff, including many compiler hackers, many kernel hackers, many with practical experience building and maintaining APIs and developer tools. They employ literally thousands of programmers who will be end users of Swift. To suggest that your opinion is more valid than theirs is hubris.
- ibdknox 12y agoHm. I said it was sad, not wrong. Let's say you take direct inspiration for something you're working on and you know someone's been there and thought a lot about it. Wouldn't it make sense to ask them about it? It's certainly true that some mistakes are better learned by making them yourself, but a whole lot aren't. Hell, half the time it's just stuff you're too close to see anymore. The Swift playground is strikingly similar to many of the things we've done in Light Table. It's wonderful that Apple is taking that and running with it and I want these things to end up out there and make things better for devs. But I could've helped them skip some of the crap along the way and I've worked with other large organizations to help them do exactly that. > To suggest that your opinion is more valid than theirs is hubris. My opinion is no more valid, but given that their work looks fairly like our own, I certainly have the benefit of past experience. This isn't about hubris. I have a unique perspective in this particular case, one that no one else will have, as the creator of one of the things they were "heavily influenced" by. I'd rather they took advantage of that so that they can continue to push things even further and not fall into some traps that we did at Microsoft and with LT itself. In any case, I'm sorry I seem to have offended you. My goal is not self aggrandizement, it's just to help do my part in making things better for us all.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoWhat is light table's equivalent to playground's timeline assistant?
- ludwigvan 12y agoYou have some valid points, but they explicitly said lighttable was an inspiration, so Chris' stance should not be confused with hubris.