Swift is coming, Swift is coming

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 at 17:59:35 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> A Wired article about Swift coming to the server, particularly 
> after the imminent open-sourcing, that also mentions D as an 
> alternative, especially since it's written by the same guy who 
> wrote about D for Wired last year:
>
> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/apples-swift-ios-programming-language-is-being-remade-for-data-centers/
>
> Will be interesting to see how Swift does, a good natural 
> experiment for those pushing D to focus on one niche before 
> expanding, as Swift is doing really well on one of the most 
> important development platforms today, iOS, before expanding 
> onto the server.  Of course, Apple is unlikely to really push 
> it on the server, other than open-sourcing and accepting 
> patches, so they have a built-in excuse if it doesn't do well. 
> ;)

Pretty much what we guessed: they're expanding the Swift platform 
but Apple is not going to develop for Windows/Android, though 
others are free to do so -

"In open-sourcing Swift, Apple has two main goals in mind. The 
first and most obvious is to make Swift code more portable and 
versatile, enabling its use in projects outside of apps for 
Apple’s platforms.

The company’s long-term vision is even more ambitious. “We think 
[Swift] is how really everyone should be programming for the next 
20 years,” Federighi told Ars. “We think it’s the next major 
programming language.

“A number of developers, including enterprise developers like 
IBM, very early on as they began developing their mobile 
applications in Swift, really wanted to be able to take the 
talents that their developers were developing and even some of 
the code and be able to deploy it in the cloud, for instance,” 
Federighi continued. “We thought the best way [to enable that], 
ultimately, was open source.”

The other goal is educational: when developers put time into 
learning Swift (or when educators take the time to teach it), 
Apple wants those skills to be more broadly applicable.

“We’re working with educators, and many professors are very 
interested in teaching Swift because it’s such an expressive 
language that’s such a great way to introduce all sorts of 
programming concepts,” Federighi said. “And enabling it as open 
source makes it possible for them to incorporate Swift really as 
part of the core curriculum.”

When we spoke with developers about the first year of Swift back 
in June, Swift’s teachability was definitely a major selling 
point. As useful as Swift might be to communicate programming 
ideas, it’s ultimately more useful to be able to take that 
knowledge and use it in multiple places."
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/12/craig-federighi-talks-open-source-swift-and-whats-coming-in-version-3-0/