Swift is coming, Swift is coming

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 26 November 2015 at 07:40:13 UTC, Jacob Carlborg 
wrote:
> On 2015-11-25 17:40, Joakim wrote:
>
>> I don't see Apple doing all that stuff nowadays.  This move to
>> open-source Swift and port it to linux seems driven by the 
>> llvm devs, I
>> doubt the company really cares.  Apple open-sourced their 
>> ARM64 backend
>> for llvm last year, despite it being better than the 
>> incomplete OSS
>> backend being worked on in llvm and providing a competitive 
>> advantage
>> for their 64-bit ARM devices, so that I can now use it for 
>> Android too.
>> Of course, there are a _lot_ less Android/Aarch64 devices than 
>> iOS.
>
> But I also doubt that they will try very hard. The ARM64 
> backend, as you mentioned, was available and in use by Apple 
> long before it was pushed upstream. Same thing with many other 
> features in Clang and LLVM. Take null-ability and Objective-C 
> generics. Apple had an implementation ready and adopt their 
> whole (most of?) SDK to use these features before they were 
> pushed upstream.

Right, my point was that it was all open-sourced and pushed 
upstream eventually.

> Also, take a look at the Windows support as an example, which 
> was poorly supported by Clang/LLVM. I don't think Apple has 
> tried a tiny bit at all to improve the Clang/LLVM support for 
> Windows.

Why should they, if they're not using it?  It's a community 
project, anybody can contribute, and it appears that Microsoft is 
now doing so.

> I'm guessing the only reason why they will release a Linux port 
> is because OS X and Linux are fairly similar, making this 
> small(er) effort.

Yes, it seems driven by the llvm devs, but who knows, maybe they 
run iCloud on linux? ;)

On Thursday, 26 November 2015 at 10:17:10 UTC, Thiez wrote:
> On Thursday, 26 November 2015 at 06:14:47 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> I don't consider Java and C# real competitors to Swift or D, 
>> as they're much older and won't attract the same users.  
>> Certainly not Java, with how verbose it is, haven't looked at 
>> C# too much.  But for those with legacy codebases, those moves 
>> towards AoT compilation will certainly help keep those 
>> languages relevant, so good for them.
>
> Much older? c# is only one year older than D. One might argue 
> that D1 doesn't count, but c# has also received various 
> improvements over the years, and is currently at version 6.

I looked that up after I wrote it, as that's what I thought and 
figured someone might call me on it.  You're right that C# and D 
were started around the same time, but C# hit 1.0 5 years before 
D did and was publicized a lot more, so it seemed older to me.