fwiw (and I am not an expert) in my understanding, Swift also has guaranteed memory safety without a GC (using automatic reference counting). not sure how it compares to Rust in that aspect
I'm a big fan of Rust and I also use Swift as part of my job. In terms of memory safety, Rust has a better story in that it will tell you of type problems pretty much upfront. The whole "Rust compile time takes forever" is only half true, because type checking happens pretty quickly. You're never left waiting for long to find out your types are wrong. The long compile happens at codegen phase, after type checking, so once it starts you know it'll finish successfully (unless there's a link error at the very end).
With Swift, that's not true. Sometimes you can wait for a while for the compiler to churn before it bails and tells you it can't fully infer types. As a Rust user, this is entirely unacceptable.
I would have to say, while I don't thoroughly dislike Swift, I do thoroughly dislike Xcode and the Apple ecosystem. The fact that Swift was tied so closely to iOS development for so long means it's not a language that people generally reach for. It feels more like ObjectiveC++ and a facet of the Apple ecosystem as a vehicle into iOS development.
People say that Rust's killer feature is the memory safety, but for me it's always been the ergonomics. Cargo and the painless dependency process is the real killer feature. Swift just doesn't have the same appeal, and that they are slowly getting there is a testament to Rust having already cracked the code; Swift only went fully cross platform (Windows+Linux+Mac) in 2020, so there's a lot of reputation as an Apple language to undo, as well as a lot of ground to catch up on. It's interesting to note that the ground they have to make up is pretty much the path that Rust blazed. So for a lot of the target audience of Swift, the question isn't "why Swift?", it's "why not Rust?". Really, they only good answer for Swift right now is "my target platform Apple."
Swift is, IMHO, much more readable and easier to grasp than rust. You don’t have to understand low-level concepts, but can go there if you need performance.
The point about Rust is to avoid any extra runtime cost by statically enforcing a set of rules (borrow checking) on reference use that are sufficient to guarantee memory safety. It also has ARC but it's reserved only for cases where those rules are too restrictive.
ModernMech|8 months ago
With Swift, that's not true. Sometimes you can wait for a while for the compiler to churn before it bails and tells you it can't fully infer types. As a Rust user, this is entirely unacceptable.
I would have to say, while I don't thoroughly dislike Swift, I do thoroughly dislike Xcode and the Apple ecosystem. The fact that Swift was tied so closely to iOS development for so long means it's not a language that people generally reach for. It feels more like ObjectiveC++ and a facet of the Apple ecosystem as a vehicle into iOS development.
People say that Rust's killer feature is the memory safety, but for me it's always been the ergonomics. Cargo and the painless dependency process is the real killer feature. Swift just doesn't have the same appeal, and that they are slowly getting there is a testament to Rust having already cracked the code; Swift only went fully cross platform (Windows+Linux+Mac) in 2020, so there's a lot of reputation as an Apple language to undo, as well as a lot of ground to catch up on. It's interesting to note that the ground they have to make up is pretty much the path that Rust blazed. So for a lot of the target audience of Swift, the question isn't "why Swift?", it's "why not Rust?". Really, they only good answer for Swift right now is "my target platform Apple."
frizlab|8 months ago
For me the answer is: Ergonomics.
Swift is, IMHO, much more readable and easier to grasp than rust. You don’t have to understand low-level concepts, but can go there if you need performance.
corank|8 months ago
steveklabnik|8 months ago