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Why is a programming language without any open source implementation getting so much attention?

pjmlp 12y ago
Because: - it brings interactive programming concepts (Playgrounds) into many mainstream developers. - it belongs to the ML language family - it recognizes the advances in mainstream computing in the last 30 years - not everyone like to type @somekeyord and [some method call] everywhere. - many of us do buy development tools and open source is just a nice to have feature
- aroman 12y ago
  > - many of us do buy development tools and open source is just a nice to have feature I realize this seems nit-pick-y (and for that I apologize), but that's a false dichotomy. Open source != free. It's possible to pay/buy open source software.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Yes, but I am yet to meet pure open source advocates that pay for more than just hardware.
romanovcode 12y ago
Because it's Apple. When Swift was released every hipster and his cat jumped the wagon on how great it is. I even saw someone trying to make webstack out of it.
- danford 12y ago
  Don't know why you're getting down voted, sure Swift has some neat features, but if any other company released something like this that was closed source, no one would really care.
  - anentropic 12y ago
    is/was Javascript open source? what matters is the platform no one cared if Javascript the language was open source when it was the only way to do client side scripting for web pages. similarly Swift has iOS and OSX - other languages are available on these but I guess developers are anticipating Apple emphasising Swift over Objective-C going forward
    - danford 12y ago
      Well it's hard to say that JS had this much attention in 1995. Let's give swift 20 years and see where it takes us?
  - jp555 12y ago
    Any other company who's language runs over 1.3 million apps used by hundreds of millions of people on average every 6 minutes?
    - romanovcode 12y ago
      Oracle and Microsoft. But their languages (Java and C#) are not platform dependent. Just an example: >Microsoft released C# Roslyn source code, announce Linux support with K Runtime this year They're going to the right direction, maybe someday... >Apple released Swift, closed source language that runs only on one platform (Mac) Apple is so awesome, keep innovating guys! Now let's write a webstack and nosql db using Swift!
      - mnem 12y ago
        C# is hideous to get running consistently (if at all) with recent versions and libraries cross platform. Perhaps this will change in the future, but they've not been particularly brilliant about it over the past decade
        romanovcode 12y ago
        I don't know what libraries you talking about but nearly everything from nuget starting with image processing and ending with orms and crypto work just fine on linux. Even more when K will come out I don't think there will be any worries at all.
- vor_ 12y ago
  It couldn't be the quality of the language or the popularity of the platform. Just "hipsters".
eddieroger 12y ago
Why does it matter that it's not open source? There is plenty of closed-source stuff on here all the time. Maybe it's getting attention because the iPhone is still an incredibly profitable platform to code for, and a lot of people on here are involved in that.
threeseed 12y ago
Is this a rhetorical question ? iOS is the lead platform for mobile app development. It is also by far the most lucrative both in terms of sales and the quality of the users i.e. for non-sales revenue. Hence there are going to more than a few developers on here interested in it. We see posts all the time for Go, Rust etc. Why would Swift be any different ?
archagon 12y ago
Because it's going to have more reach than most open source programming languages. In a few weeks, millions of people are going to be running Swift apps on their phones, tablets, and desktops.

pjmlp 12y ago

Because: - it brings interactive programming concepts (Playgrounds) into many mainstream developers. - it belongs to the ML language family - it recognizes the advances in mainstream computing in the last 30 years - not everyone like to type @somekeyord and [some method call] everywhere. - many of us do buy development tools and open source is just a nice to have feature

aroman 12y ago
> - many of us do buy development tools and open source is just a nice to have feature I realize this seems nit-pick-y (and for that I apologize), but that's a false dichotomy. Open source != free. It's possible to pay/buy open source software.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Yes, but I am yet to meet pure open source advocates that pay for more than just hardware.

romanovcode 12y ago

Because it's Apple. When Swift was released every hipster and his cat jumped the wagon on how great it is. I even saw someone trying to make webstack out of it.

danford 12y ago
Don't know why you're getting down voted, sure Swift has some neat features, but if any other company released something like this that was closed source, no one would really care.
- anentropic 12y ago
  is/was Javascript open source? what matters is the platform no one cared if Javascript the language was open source when it was the only way to do client side scripting for web pages. similarly Swift has iOS and OSX - other languages are available on these but I guess developers are anticipating Apple emphasising Swift over Objective-C going forward
  - danford 12y ago
    Well it's hard to say that JS had this much attention in 1995. Let's give swift 20 years and see where it takes us?
- jp555 12y ago
  Any other company who's language runs over 1.3 million apps used by hundreds of millions of people on average every 6 minutes?
  - romanovcode 12y ago
    Oracle and Microsoft. But their languages (Java and C#) are not platform dependent. Just an example: >Microsoft released C# Roslyn source code, announce Linux support with K Runtime this year They're going to the right direction, maybe someday... >Apple released Swift, closed source language that runs only on one platform (Mac) Apple is so awesome, keep innovating guys! Now let's write a webstack and nosql db using Swift!
    - mnem 12y ago
      C# is hideous to get running consistently (if at all) with recent versions and libraries cross platform. Perhaps this will change in the future, but they've not been particularly brilliant about it over the past decade
      - romanovcode 12y ago
        I don't know what libraries you talking about but nearly everything from nuget starting with image processing and ending with orms and crypto work just fine on linux. Even more when K will come out I don't think there will be any worries at all.
vor_ 12y ago
It couldn't be the quality of the language or the popularity of the platform. Just "hipsters".

eddieroger 12y ago

Why does it matter that it's not open source? There is plenty of closed-source stuff on here all the time. Maybe it's getting attention because the iPhone is still an incredibly profitable platform to code for, and a lot of people on here are involved in that.

threeseed 12y ago

Is this a rhetorical question ? iOS is the lead platform for mobile app development. It is also by far the most lucrative both in terms of sales and the quality of the users i.e. for non-sales revenue. Hence there are going to more than a few developers on here interested in it. We see posts all the time for Go, Rust etc. Why would Swift be any different ?

archagon 12y ago

Because it's going to have more reach than most open source programming languages. In a few weeks, millions of people are going to be running Swift apps on their phones, tablets, and desktops.