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Too little too late. Apple could have got my attention if they had done this from the start, but at this point I find it hard to get excited about this. Half th

Too little too late. Apple could have got my attention if they had done this from the start, but at this point I find it hard to get excited about this. Half the reason I find myself drawn to a new language is the culture and community surrounding it. You might think this seems silly at first glance, they're programming languages, not fraternities. But hear me out. Golang is a pragmatic crowd. Go into #go-nuts on freenode, you'll notice that discussion rarely deviates from solving problems. Many links to the go playground. Go, from the beginning, shaped their community in this way. Consciously? Who knows. But the community turned out the way it did and I believe that's a result of their start. Haskell is a computer scientist crowd. People write in haskell because they enjoy the functional paradigm and haskell is a purely functional language. Discussion on freenode? Very dense. People are expected to grasp topics easily and the community initially gives everyone the benefit of the doubt that they are capable of understanding it until they ask for more help. When I look at swift, the only thought I have is that it is the new iOS language. I don't believe they'll be able to deviate from that. I don't see myself making iOS apps, so I don't see myself every writing a single line of the language. When I first looked at swift, my impression was that it was a wierd and somewhat-functional language that had a few unique things. Maybe I would have taken an interest in it. But at this point, I don't want to have to wade through a bunch of iOS specific questions to get what I need. I don't want to have to deal with being a beta tester for their linux implementations. I don't want to use the language when I'm probably going to be using it in a vastly different way than the rest of the community is. My interests are going to be second class. It's not necessarily set in stone, but I think it is. In a world where there's a new language every day, I just don't see why I'd go with swift.

coldtea 11y ago
>Too little too late. Apple could have got my attention if they had done this from the start, but at this point I find it hard to get excited about this. That's just like your opinion man. If Swift is Open Source it's gonna be a huge thing, for two reasons: (a) it already attracts millions of developers because it's the suggested language to develop iOS apps in, and (b) it's a nice modern language that plays in a very hot niche (with languages like Go, Scala, Rust etc). >When I look at swift, the only thought I have is that it is the new iOS language. OTOH, tons of people and HN and elsewhere expressed their liking for the language and how they wished it was open sourced so they can use it elsewhere too.
- nvbn 11y ago
  Have you tried Go, Scala or Rust? All of those language are from their separate leagues, how can you compare swift with them?
  - mattdw 11y ago
    In my experience, in the wide world of programming languages Rust and Swift are really not very far apart. Swift's designers even cited Rust as an influence.
    - steveklabnik 11y ago
      > Swift's designers even cited Rust as an influence. Specifically, http://nondot.org/sabre/ http://nondot.org/sabre/ > Of course, it also greatly benefited from the > experiences hard-won by many other languages in the > field, drawing ideas from Objective-C, Rust, Haskell, > Ruby, Python, C#, CLU, and far too many others to list.
      - shaneofalltrad 11y ago
        ...you can say they looked at <add your favourite language here> as an influence.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  It seems to me that Microsoft and Apple are -- quite consciously -- in a war to own the next ubiquitous language (the precursors being Javascript, PHP, Java, C++, C, Fortran, and COBOL). This is the language that Comp Sci students will spend their time in, that kids and hobbyists will tinker with, and so on. It's a huge deal -- the stakes are enormous. C# was in good shape and got better with Microsoft's recent cross-platform moves; Swift has started way behind, but is doing very, very well. Luckily for us, the two languages are not worlds apart. Crossing from one to the other won't be a terrible thing -- so lean back and enjoy your popcorn.
  - 11y ago
hockeybias 11y ago
ditto.
melling 11y ago
Hey, look me up in a year and explain why you were wrong. Go has been out for 6 years and has less than 10,000 questions on StackOverFlow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/go http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/go Swift has 37,000 questions in its first year: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/swift http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/swift I'm a fan of Go. I built my websites in it and I've written a few small apps. However, you really are overlooking how much of a difference the bigger Swift community will be. All bets are off if Google officially supports Go on Android. Anyway, 1,000,000 Swift developers will change everything.
- bitmapbrother 11y ago
  Of course, all bets are off once Go becomes a first class citizen on Android.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    This cannot happen soon enough. I'm not saying this because of anything to do with Apple's Swift announcement. I'm saying this because it'll be a huge benefit to Android.
    - zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
      > I'm saying this because it'll be a huge benefit to Android. reply How so? The language has a weaker type system than Java, doesn't support exceptions and requires error checking every other line, has very poor tool support (because the compiler was not designed with IDE's in mind). Except maybe add a few developers who refused to write code on Android because of Java, I really don't see what Go would bring to Android.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - jophde 11y ago
        You shouldn't be getting down-voted. The idea of anyone rewriting the entire Android Framework in Go when you can use better languages like Kotlin, Scala, Groovy, Clojure is asinine. Go will compile to Android architectures so you could do shared code in Go between iOS and Android like a C++ lib. That makes sense.
threeseed 11y ago
Golang is a pragmatic crowd ? Weird because it seems like an ideologically driven language. Their attitude towards exception handling and generics has never strike me as being overly pragmatic.
aikah 11y ago
> Golang is a pragmatic crowd Why do people keep on saying that? Would people say javascript is for the pragmatic crowd because jsfiddle exists ? no Go is a badly designed language period. the type system forces devs to write runtime type assertions which should be the job of the compiler thanks to parametric types, if go designers knew one or 2 things about types. The fact that Go dismisses 30+ years of type theory isn't pragmatism. It's ignorance. Nobody would call PHP pragmatic yet even PHP is more expressive.
- dmacvicar 11y ago
  I had the same opinion as you until I started some code with it. The true is that I had never been so productive writing code. The friction from what is in your head and the code is almost 0. It is true that I ended writing a few functions that were there only because the lack of generics, the type system and other stuff being "built-in". But at the end, I think it was an order of magnitude less often than I was expecting it to. I was wrong.
  - 72deluxe 11y ago
    Your comment is interesting, it has made me want to look at the language, so thanks. But I think that the "friction from what is in your head to code" probably betrays that you weren't settled in a previous language? I only say this because I have zero friction writing C++, and have to think mildly backwards when it comes to C# or Java, and definitely Objective-C. Even PHP is like simplified C++ to me, so I write everything like it is a dumbed-down dialect of C++. I suppose it is just what some people find comfortable.
    - sacado2 11y ago
      > But I think that the "friction from what is in your head to code" probably betrays that you weren't settled in a previous language? I had the same feeling as the user you're answering to. And I have used quite a bunch of languages I've been quite productive with (C, C++, PHP, Python, Java, Ada), but I've never felt with these languages as little "friction" as with Go. I mean, that language is so dumb that you don't have to think about the right way to do stuff. It's obvious. Boring, sometimes verbose, but obvious. It doesn't stand in the way between me and the problem.
nnethercote 11y ago
> Too little too late. This is a toxic attitude. It suggests that if people don't get something right on the first try they shouldn't try to improve it. "Better late than never" is true in many cases, and this is one of them.
- MCRed 11y ago
  Also, Apple tends to figure out what they have and try to get it right before releasing it widely. They don't want to throw things out there and then cause a lot of forks and language wars. The idea that it should be open source from the beginning, or it's worthless, is kinda dogmatic. Apple knows that the most core technologies need to be open source, which is why Darwin is there, Webkit, etc. And which is why Apple's work on LLVM is open source, it's extensions to Objective-C and of course Swift. Swift was always going to be open source, but Apple launches OS products differently-- it gets them to 1.0 so they are strong enough to stand on their own.
Rapzid 11y ago
I really like Go and have written quite a bit.. But go into #go-nuts and ask about unsafe. Just as a counter point.

coldtea 11y ago

>Too little too late. Apple could have got my attention if they had done this from the start, but at this point I find it hard to get excited about this. That's just like your opinion man. If Swift is Open Source it's gonna be a huge thing, for two reasons: (a) it already attracts millions of developers because it's the suggested language to develop iOS apps in, and (b) it's a nice modern language that plays in a very hot niche (with languages like Go, Scala, Rust etc). >When I look at swift, the only thought I have is that it is the new iOS language. OTOH, tons of people and HN and elsewhere expressed their liking for the language and how they wished it was open sourced so they can use it elsewhere too.

nvbn 11y ago
Have you tried Go, Scala or Rust? All of those language are from their separate leagues, how can you compare swift with them?
- mattdw 11y ago
  In my experience, in the wide world of programming languages Rust and Swift are really not very far apart. Swift's designers even cited Rust as an influence.
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    > Swift's designers even cited Rust as an influence. Specifically, http://nondot.org/sabre/ http://nondot.org/sabre/ > Of course, it also greatly benefited from the > experiences hard-won by many other languages in the > field, drawing ideas from Objective-C, Rust, Haskell, > Ruby, Python, C#, CLU, and far too many others to list.
    - shaneofalltrad 11y ago
      ...you can say they looked at <add your favourite language here> as an influence.
Tloewald 11y ago
It seems to me that Microsoft and Apple are -- quite consciously -- in a war to own the next ubiquitous language (the precursors being Javascript, PHP, Java, C++, C, Fortran, and COBOL). This is the language that Comp Sci students will spend their time in, that kids and hobbyists will tinker with, and so on. It's a huge deal -- the stakes are enormous. C# was in good shape and got better with Microsoft's recent cross-platform moves; Swift has started way behind, but is doing very, very well. Luckily for us, the two languages are not worlds apart. Crossing from one to the other won't be a terrible thing -- so lean back and enjoy your popcorn.
- 11y ago

hockeybias 11y ago

ditto.

melling 11y ago

Hey, look me up in a year and explain why you were wrong. Go has been out for 6 years and has less than 10,000 questions on StackOverFlow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/go http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/go Swift has 37,000 questions in its first year: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/swift http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/swift I'm a fan of Go. I built my websites in it and I've written a few small apps. However, you really are overlooking how much of a difference the bigger Swift community will be. All bets are off if Google officially supports Go on Android. Anyway, 1,000,000 Swift developers will change everything.

bitmapbrother 11y ago
Of course, all bets are off once Go becomes a first class citizen on Android.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  This cannot happen soon enough. I'm not saying this because of anything to do with Apple's Swift announcement. I'm saying this because it'll be a huge benefit to Android.
  - zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
    > I'm saying this because it'll be a huge benefit to Android. reply How so? The language has a weaker type system than Java, doesn't support exceptions and requires error checking every other line, has very poor tool support (because the compiler was not designed with IDE's in mind). Except maybe add a few developers who refused to write code on Android because of Java, I really don't see what Go would bring to Android.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - jophde 11y ago
      You shouldn't be getting down-voted. The idea of anyone rewriting the entire Android Framework in Go when you can use better languages like Kotlin, Scala, Groovy, Clojure is asinine. Go will compile to Android architectures so you could do shared code in Go between iOS and Android like a C++ lib. That makes sense.

threeseed 11y ago

Golang is a pragmatic crowd ? Weird because it seems like an ideologically driven language. Their attitude towards exception handling and generics has never strike me as being overly pragmatic.

aikah 11y ago

> Golang is a pragmatic crowd Why do people keep on saying that? Would people say javascript is for the pragmatic crowd because jsfiddle exists ? no Go is a badly designed language period. the type system forces devs to write runtime type assertions which should be the job of the compiler thanks to parametric types, if go designers knew one or 2 things about types. The fact that Go dismisses 30+ years of type theory isn't pragmatism. It's ignorance. Nobody would call PHP pragmatic yet even PHP is more expressive.

dmacvicar 11y ago
I had the same opinion as you until I started some code with it. The true is that I had never been so productive writing code. The friction from what is in your head and the code is almost 0. It is true that I ended writing a few functions that were there only because the lack of generics, the type system and other stuff being "built-in". But at the end, I think it was an order of magnitude less often than I was expecting it to. I was wrong.
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  Your comment is interesting, it has made me want to look at the language, so thanks. But I think that the "friction from what is in your head to code" probably betrays that you weren't settled in a previous language? I only say this because I have zero friction writing C++, and have to think mildly backwards when it comes to C# or Java, and definitely Objective-C. Even PHP is like simplified C++ to me, so I write everything like it is a dumbed-down dialect of C++. I suppose it is just what some people find comfortable.
  - sacado2 11y ago
    > But I think that the "friction from what is in your head to code" probably betrays that you weren't settled in a previous language? I had the same feeling as the user you're answering to. And I have used quite a bunch of languages I've been quite productive with (C, C++, PHP, Python, Java, Ada), but I've never felt with these languages as little "friction" as with Go. I mean, that language is so dumb that you don't have to think about the right way to do stuff. It's obvious. Boring, sometimes verbose, but obvious. It doesn't stand in the way between me and the problem.

nnethercote 11y ago

> Too little too late. This is a toxic attitude. It suggests that if people don't get something right on the first try they shouldn't try to improve it. "Better late than never" is true in many cases, and this is one of them.

MCRed 11y ago
Also, Apple tends to figure out what they have and try to get it right before releasing it widely. They don't want to throw things out there and then cause a lot of forks and language wars. The idea that it should be open source from the beginning, or it's worthless, is kinda dogmatic. Apple knows that the most core technologies need to be open source, which is why Darwin is there, Webkit, etc. And which is why Apple's work on LLVM is open source, it's extensions to Objective-C and of course Swift. Swift was always going to be open source, but Apple launches OS products differently-- it gets them to 1.0 so they are strong enough to stand on their own.

Rapzid 11y ago

I really like Go and have written quite a bit.. But go into #go-nuts and ask about unsafe. Just as a counter point.