These days I mainly write Rust but I did write a semi complex iOS app and enjoyed Swift. I just didn't love how slow the type checker was and how it got lost. I recall having to break things into smaller bits to help the compiler, and there were some oddities about the language.
The gap between the two languages is quite small, it just makes me wish Apple was also all-in on Rust
In the last year they’ve added improvements to the type checker to speed it up, those would have been released now.
They have further and much more significant changes that I think might have recently landed in the development version. That should make an even bigger difference. But it’s not in a released version yet.
And yes, none of us like that one part of Swift. Especially the DRASTIC difference compared to objective-C which really only checked syntax and little else.
It’s still probably my favorite language right now though I don’t get to write in it much.
There’s no reason to invent your own head canon, the influence was openly acknowledged when Swift was new and it continues now that the language is developed out in the open (see Swift Ownership Manifesto)
I believe Swift tends to use reference counting and copy-on-write strategies. This, like GC, is less for the programmer to think about and doesn't require the semantic checks, but sometimes the performance cost is unacceptable compared to what you'd write in Rust.
You can choose to use either refcounting or unique ownership for your types. For most use cases, refcounted (+ copy-on-write) is the best choice and is the default, but the truetype interpreter made extensive use of non-refcounted types to achieve this performance.
They have either recently added or talked about a borrow style system in the language as a way to avoid more copies and speed things up/lower memory usage/help with asynchronous programming.
And you are absolutely correct. I've seen the DT page thanks to the linked HN submission (actually comment [1]. And incorrectly associated the DT article incorrectly today. Thank you.
- i pressed "Amino Acids", and nothing updated below the toolbar. can't figure out what it does
- the "Tools" buttons looks like a segmented picker, but both seem to actually initiate a modal presentation
this tool seems interesting, but it would be worth polishing some of these ui quirks because my first impression was that it seems a bit broken (or confused me)!
but seems like a cool project otherwise, love people building and sharing explainers as they learn stuff!
is it actually free? or are we collectively paying for it by allowing the big business to gain control of an otherwise competitive market and jack up prices
individuals are not pricing that in. coordination is needed. that's why we regulate the market
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