[stephc_int13]

I remember mocking the switch to Swift back then.

Swift is a poorly designed language, slow to compile, visibly not on path to be major system language, and they had no expert on the team.

I am glad they are cutting their losses.

[isodev]

Swift never felt truly open source either. That people can propose evolution points doesn’t change the fact that Apple still holds all the keys and pushes whatever priorities they need, even if they’re not a good idea (e.g. Concurrency, Swift Testing etc)

Also funny enough, all cross platform work is with small work groups, some even looking for funding … anyway.

[iLemming]

> Swift never felt truly open source either.

Apple has been always 'transactional' when it comes to OSS - they open source things only when it serves a strategic purpose. They open-sourced Swift only because they needed the community to build an ecosystem around their platform.

Yeah, well, sure they've done some work around LLVM/Clang, WebKit, CUPS, but it's really not proportional to the size and the influence they still have.

Compare them to Google, with - TensorFlow, k8s, Android (nominally), Golang, Chrome, and a long tail of other shit. Or Meta - PyTorch and the Llama model series. Or even Microsoft, which has dramatically reversed course from its "open source is a cancer" era (yeah, they were openly saying that, can you believe it?) to becoming one of the largest contributors on GitHub.

Apple I've heard even have harshest restrictions about it - some teams are just not permitted to contribute to OSS in any way. Obsessively secretive and for what price? No wonder that Apple's software products are just horrendously bad, if not all the time - well, too often. And on their own hardware too.

I wouldn't mind if Swift dies, I'm glad Objective-C is no longer relevant. In fact, I can't wait for Swift to die sooner.

[stephc_int13]

The fact that Swift is an Apple baby should indeed be considered a red flag. I know there are some Objective-C lovers out there but I think it is an abomination.

Apple is (was?) good at hardware design and UX, but they pretty bad at producing software.

[WaldoDude]

Swift has it's problems, and I certainly wouldn't use it for anything outside of development for Apple platforms, but saying they had no experts on the team is a stretch. Most Swift leads were highly regarded members of the C++ world, even if you discount Chris Lattner.

[stephc_int13]

I meant no Swift experts in the Ladybird team. Their expertise is C++, you may think the transition is easy, and it can be pretty painless at first, but true language expertise means knowing how to work around its flaws, and adapting your patterns to its strenghts. Cool for a hobby, but switching language in the middle of an herculean work is suicide.

[unsnap_biceps]

I think they were meaning that there were no swift experts on the LadyBird team

[zozbot234]

The point of Swift is not really the language, it's the standard ABI for dynamic code. The Rust folks should commit to supporting it as a kind of extern FFI/interop alongside C, at least on platforms where a standard Swift implementation exists.

[TbobbyZ]

What language do you recommend?

[stephc_int13]

The best tool for the job is the one you know and love.

[fud101]

is go the same? what is the consensus best pick right now I wonder, is it C#?

[layer8]

Best pick for what? It always depends, and there is certainly no consensus.