[HN Gopher] Swift was not given the chance to prove itself as a ...
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       Swift was not given the chance to prove itself as a language
        
       Author : troupo
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2023-10-07 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mastodon.social)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mastodon.social)
        
       | Someone wrote:
       | > "Do the benefits you intend to add outweigh these downsides."
       | Or does there exist _some other language_ that gets it close
       | enough, plus has decades of work and stability going for it? The
       | fact that Apple kept this thing to such a small number of people
       | before announcing it leads me to believe they never even
       | considered this sort of analysis.
       | 
       | I don't see how that follows, and think it isn't true. They
       | wanted [1]
       | 
       | a) a modern safe approachable [2] language
       | 
       | b) with excellent interoperability with their Objective-C code,
       | so that it could gradually replace it.
       | 
       | c) that's at least as time and space efficient as the
       | Objective-C/C/C++ combo.
       | 
       | d) that they have control over.
       | 
       | d) alone implies they needed a new language, but even ignoring
       | d), what were their options?
       | 
       | The 'approachable' in a) (IMO) rules out languages like _rust_
       | (which also didn't exist yet), b) implies they needed reference
       | counting and strong typing, c) rules out anything interpreted or
       | JVM-based.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.swift.org/about doesn't mention most of these,
       | but I don't think that makes it untrue.
       | 
       | [2] I think they got that only partially. Swift looks like a
       | simple language, but is not one (anymore)
        
       | steeve wrote:
       | All I'll say is: "Expression too complex to be evaluated in
       | reasonable time"
       | 
       | Those who know, know.
        
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       (page generated 2023-10-07 23:02 UTC)