It is somewhat unfair to dismiss Rust as an unfinished beta in comments on an article that demonstrates how the Swift compiler isn't even up to beta standards.

It is somewhat unfair to dismiss Rust as an unfinished beta in comments on an article that demonstrates how the Swift compiler isn't even up to beta standards. Swift is a nice language for sure. It picks up nicest features of many other language and doesn't trade that off with many annoyancies (from what I've seen so far). It also appears like a very accessible language. It breaks with older languages where those older languages are bad (eg "==" vs "===") but mostly sticks to things that work and are familiar. I think these criteria are important for what I think is "good language design". Swift is not in any reasonable sense an innovative language. There is really nothing in there that is new. Now you can get worked up about that, or just accept that innovativity is really something far less important (or perhaps even undesirable) when compared to "good design" for Swift. Especially given its unique position.