devsquid's comments

Eventually someones going to create a XML based layout language to use to construct views in the Canvas, we could even call it HTML ;)

I'm not a web developer either and I look forward to WASM and its potential. But I really like HTML, I've used lots of layout languages before and I think HTML is the best I've used. The only thing I find HTML to be obtuse about is complex animations.

Oh yea LLVM and Clang are incredible pieces of software! He is truly a master.

I feel your sentiment. But I always thought getting browsers to adopt Dart was a crazy and impossible idea. I was actually glad when I heard they had abandoned that plan.

Flutter confuses me. Its annoying you have to use their DSL for layouts rather than HTML and what about native widgets, like WebViews or VideoPlayers?

With them drastically speeding up the Dart2JS compiler and implementing a strong typed mode, I am quite pleased with Dart's direction.

I do still fear for its future. It would be really to sad to see Dart die. The last web app I made, I was able to make the entire thing in under 90kbs, including HTML, CSS, SVGs, and JS. Dart allows me to write desktop like applications for the web with any extra overhead.

There are some web frameworks that are indevelopment. That does not mean Swift has gained any traction. Also having toyed around with one, the experience was not great.

When writing a server, I would take Go over Swift anyday. It out preforms it, uses less memory, its simpiler, oh and it uses a "tradiontal" GC.

I get your point, programming language communities all have a certain level of fan-boyism. However I find Swift's community to be particularly abhorrent. I stopped partcipating when people started to ask if certain codes is "Swifty" and people would judge the merit of something on whether its "Swifty". It also got tiring with how militant they were with other programming languages, especially Java.

Well that doesn't bode well ;) Sierra's dock is sooo buggy. I have to restart my machine numerous times a day because the dock stops working, literally doesn't work lol. I'm sure theres a way to restart just the dock app, but eh i've been quite busy. Sierra has been one of the buggiest version of Mac I can remember using.

I would surprised if they actually did tho. I know someone did some static analysis of the apps for mac and iOS and found Swift was barely used at all.

Yup but people love to argue over the small shit. Chris Lattner even refers to ARC as a form of GC.

No I'm not confusing them. I'm responding directly to the comment that Chris lattner represents a more measured approach to software development than is tradition in the tech industry.

I don't think Swift stands to gain wide spread traction outside of Apple orientated app development. Aside from a lack of stability, Apple is to well known for boxing its competitors out. I've used and loved their products my entire life and I know how annoying it is to go against Apple's grain.

Sure Lattner and Musk are interesting people, but I find the level of hero worship in the tech industry to be sickening.

Having used compilers for a few new languages (Rust, Go, Dart, Kotlin, Swift). Swift is the only one I've had any issues with as well as Swift seems to be the only language to have adopted the "move fast and break things" philosophy of Silicon Valley. I dunno, I just don't see the argument.

If I remember right, its just the calculator app. Lol....

I find Swift to be getting worse each year. While sure i'm blessed that I don't have to write applications in assemble, I have grown jaded towards Swift. If it wasn't because I am an iOS developer, I would happily not use the language. I have been slowly positioning myself away from doing iOS development. I feel like a massive corporation like Apple can provide better tools to write apps for their walled garden than what they are providing me.

You find it better than before? I find that Swift 3.+ is drastically worse than Swift 2.

Oh? I meant it as a srs question. I wasn't sure what parts I should include. But thanks for essentially saying most of it.

I should mention I also find the community to be sorta toxic. They are so focused on Swift being the one language to rule them all and they use terms like "Swifty".

Well I'm sure he's a very experienced manager for technical projects and also brings a large amount of experience with compilers to the table.

His online presence always has that Apple Arrogance™ to it. Thats coming from someone who was born and raised an Apple fan.

Do you use Swift at all?

-edit- I meant it as a serious question. But the person who responded to me sums up the issues.

The dev compiler translates Dart code into human readable JS code. So you can write a library in Dart and still provide JS code someone could realistically adapt to their environment or if Dart were to go away it would allow you an easy path of escape.

I know the first thing I thought about was does this mean Tesla's going to start writing its software in Swift. If so they are fucked :P. (BTW I write non-critical consumer software in Swift as my day job)

I think they mentioned some gains in the size of the compiled JS. I don't remember tho.

Yea actually I forgot about how slow it was to compile to JS. They are saying it should around 100MS now to do a dev compile. So its feasible to use other browsers actively during development. That is probably the biggest thing for me they announced at the Dart Con.

ARC is a whole debate, but the one thing it is not is simple and I would argue its more error prone than a traditional GC. I've used it for most of my career and I have seen what sloppy/unaware coding can do to it.

Lattner is a well known expert on compilers. Having used Swift since its inception, I would call into question the reliability of the Swift LLVM compiler. In its current state (3.0.2) its absolutely terrible and does not back up the sentiment; "But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you look closely, Lattner has been leading this charge at the language and compiler level".