This might be an unpopular thought in a Swift-focused thread, but as an outsider I have never understood how anybody thought Swift had a future. I saw that people left Apple and tried to get a Swift thing going at Google, which appears to have collapsed shortly after. I have no idea whether it collapsed and people quit Google, or people quit and it collapsed. Doesn't really matter which, or whether it really collapsed at all.
To me, as an outsider, the only interesting question remaining is, what ideas, if any, from Swift are good enough to adopt into other languages that seem to have legs?
Perhaps people thought it had a future because it's backed by one of the richest companies in history, who also happen to be producing the most popular consumer product in history, which incidentally runs on Swift?
Bounds checking by default, explicit unsafe code, type safe enumerations, generic programming with all constraints validated at compile time, standard ABI,....
Again. Swift has (like any walled-garden language) exactly zero value to me other than, potentially, a source of uniquely new, useful programming language design ideas.
Pjmlp's list does not include any unfamiliar from other languages.
Only you know what's valuable to you, but since this is a public forum, it's a bit strange to be so categorical about your own highly subjective opinions. Why would anyone care about them?
This sounds particularly deluded:
> as an outsider I have never understood how anybody thought Swift had a future.
The objective fact is that there are a million or so working developers happily using Swift. And there are also lots of people that dislike it, but clearly it's very useful and popular.
And in what sense would Swift be "walled garden"? Very few languages were constructed for philosophical purists like you.
Again, not interested. My openly identified opinion on the usefulness and ultimate fate of the language makes no difference. The number of people who have used the language doesn't, either. Anyone not interested in my opinion is welcome to their own. Even you.
Either my actual question has meaningful answers, or it doesn't. Thus far it seems the answer is "none"; that would be the least surprising answer. And the evidence thus far suggests you would like to distract us from that fact, if fact it is.
Clearly the answer is not "none", it's "almost everyone".
The first Swift build tools beta was downloaded ELEVEN MILLION TIMES in the first month alone. I would be surprised if that is not some kind of record. And it was the most loved language on SO already in 2016.
We're talking about a language powering the favourite devices of the richest 20% of the world population, a language that is extremely actively supported by the richest company on the planet. I think any reasonable person would conclude that it "has a future".
My actual question you persist in trying to distract from was, and I quote: "what ideas, if any, from Swift are good enough to adopt into other languages...?"
Apparently the answer is, No features in Swift should be of any interest to anyone else.
And, again, how many NOSES APPLE HAS BROWNED is still of no interest whatsoever. Shame on you. Your behavior is reprehensible, but not unrepresentative; it reflects badly on Apple.
To me, as an outsider, the only interesting question remaining is, what ideas, if any, from Swift are good enough to adopt into other languages that seem to have legs?