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Apple is open sourcing Swift Build

(www.swift.org)
612 points dayanruben | 19 comments | 01 Feb 25 16:44 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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uhura ◴[01 Feb 25 19:07 UTC] No.42901158[source]▶
I believe that this long game of Swift being "good for everything" but "better for Apple platforms" will be detrimental to the language. This does not help the language nor seems to bring more people to the ecosystem.

Competitors seems to have a combination of: - Being more open-source - Have more contributors - Have a narrower scope

Maybe they should consider open sourcing all the tooling (like Xcode) otherwise the gap will only grow over time when compared to other languages.

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jitl ◴[01 Feb 25 23:44 UTC] No.42903797[source]▶
I don't get this reaction.

Apple: here, we're open-sourcing this previously closed-source Apple-specific thing that made Swift better on Apple platforms. We're moving the Apple stuff into a plugin so Windows and Linux can be equal peers to Apple in the new system. We've implemented preliminary support for Windows & Linux and plan to continue work to bring them up to parity.

Hacker News: I believe that this long game of Swift being "good for everything" but "better for Apple platforms" will be detrimental to the language. This does not help the language nor seems to bring more people to the ecosystem.

Like, what more do you want from them? For them to only open-source Swift Build once they've fully implemented complete parity for Windows and Linux? In the years you'd be waiting for full parity, we'd still see this same kind of comment on every story about swift, asking when they're going to open source a production-level build system.

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1. gruuuk ◴[02 Feb 25 00:09 UTC] No.42903995[source]▶
They should have been fully open source with full linux support and parity since day one.

That would actually help the language get traction. At this point it's a dying language.

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2. tombert ◴[02 Feb 25 00:38 UTC] No.42904197[source]▶
Is it dying? I think it's still pretty popular for app development isn't it?

I was pretty excited to hear that Ladybird is doing a lot of stuff in Swift, because I think it's a pretty decent and fast language and I think it'd be pretty neat to see a browser written in it.

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3. ChrisMarshallNY ◴[02 Feb 25 01:04 UTC] No.42904446[source]▶
> At this point it's a dying language.

I disagree.

Source: Someone who has been programming Apple since 1986, and has heard last rites being administered to Apple, many times.

4. lawgimenez ◴[02 Feb 25 01:25 UTC] No.42904610[source]▶
Come on now, iOS development is my livelihood.
5. napierzaza ◴[02 Feb 25 01:27 UTC] No.42904627[source]▶
No one uses Apple platforms - sent from my iPhone
6. fastball ◴[02 Feb 25 02:56 UTC] No.42905261[source]▶
What language are you using to develop native apps for macOS and iOS and visionOS and watchOS, since Swift is dying?
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7. paulddraper ◴[02 Feb 25 03:03 UTC] No.42905319[source]▶
Lol, as long as it’s the preferred programming language for the most lucrative consumer devices ever, it cannot die.

Impossible to argue otherwise.

8. technol0gic ◴[02 Feb 25 03:42 UTC] No.42905595[source]▶
trolling for reactions is trite and predictable
9. jayd16 ◴[02 Feb 25 03:57 UTC] No.42905671[source]▶
C#, Unity.
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10. pjmlp ◴[02 Feb 25 06:53 UTC] No.42906637{3}[source]▶
Which rely on a mix of Objective-C and Swift APIs to actually interact with the platform.
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11. sgt ◴[02 Feb 25 07:16 UTC] No.42906769[source]▶
There's a lot more buzz and activity around Swift than many other languages. It's literally up there with Rust, in terms of excitement (perhaps not quite as high). But I think if they get excitement outside of the Apple ecosystem, things should start to get super interesting.

Some are already adopting it like Ladybird browser.

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12. jayd16 ◴[02 Feb 25 08:39 UTC] No.42907184{4}[source]▶
What's your point? That's what Apple makes available. I'd use the C# API if that's how they provided it.

If not dominating the games on those plarforms, Unity and C# have a strong footing to say the least. Swift doesn't seem to be making very much headway on platforms where APIs are available in anything else.

Maybe that can chance. It seems like a neat language but "it's popular because apple forces you to use it" is more damning than reassuring.

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13. dzikimarian ◴[02 Feb 25 09:27 UTC] No.42907445[source]▶
Sorry to be mood killer, but I think that might be your bubble. That's a first news about Swift I've seen in a long time and I don't see a reason to try it, given alternatives. Nowhere near Rust level of presence in discussion.
14. pjmlp ◴[02 Feb 25 10:39 UTC] No.42907799{5}[source]▶
The point is that they are guest languages on Apple ecosystem and need Apple tooling and languages as means being available.

I may also add that I dislike Microsoft doesn't give to the .NET ecosystem the same care for games developers as Apple does for Swift and existing OS SDKs.

As far as DirectX team is concerned, only C++ exists, and .NET team lets third party folks do the needful.

Had it not been for MonoGame, Unity would never picked C# in first place, gone were the days of Managed DirectX and XNA, when the decision came to be as Unity did their cross-platform rewrite out of OS X.

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15. homebrewer ◴[02 Feb 25 11:13 UTC] No.42907916[source]▶
If we're trading anecdotes, I'll share mine as someone's who's completely outside of Apple ecosystem and is not interested in it in the slightest: I only ever hear about Swift on HN, nowhere else. Most of my colleagues, friends and acquaintances (who is in IT, but none of whom are Apple users) don't even know it exist, while everyone has at least heard about Rust. We all live in bubbles, admit it.
16. flohofwoe ◴[02 Feb 25 11:20 UTC] No.42907945[source]▶
It's essentially "Big in Japan" (eg on Apple platforms but nowhere else). Even on Apple platforms I winder if ObjC is actually still more popular ;)
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17. Longhanks ◴[02 Feb 25 13:33 UTC] No.42908533{3}[source]▶
Well if you wonder you should conduct some simple research, but be prepared to have your opinion challenged. Swift ist doing very fine and much more popular than ObjC (again, if you don't believe it, invest 5 minutes into research).
18. jayd16 ◴[02 Feb 25 18:05 UTC] No.42910387{6}[source]▶
The specifics of C# are fairly irrelevant. Point is that even if swift is forced, middleware can and will just plaster over that. Even if Metal is forced, tools can plaster over that.

Apple forcing an API is not enough to sustain a language's popularity.

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19. pjmlp ◴[02 Feb 25 18:45 UTC] No.42910719{7}[source]▶
When the language is required for one of two mobile ecosystems, and second major desktop ecosystem, popularity is relative.

For decades C# was only relevant on Windows, outside Unity never got wide adoption among AAA studios after Unreal became free, and after their license debacle less so, Godot favors C++ and GDScript even with C# support it isn't what most folks reach for, and Microsoft keeps having an adoption (popularity) problem on UNIX culture oriented startups.

While just like Swift on Apple's ecosystem, C# is doing just fine on Microsoft culture environments.

Popularity is relative.