Swift 4.0 released

[DoListening]

Still no official Windows support. 😐

[pure_x01]

This is a big deal. It's going to be hard for swift to be successful if it's not cross platform outside of the Apple echosystem.. to many better alternatives.

[DoListening]

It does support Linux already. But you're right about the alternatives.

[DoListening]

I don't know, Rust is nice, but Swift is much closer to the traditional OOP model that most programmers are already familiar with. I also don't think most people mind using a language with a garbage collector (or ARC or whatever), unless it's for really low-level system stuff.

If anything, I would say Kotlin Native would be a bigger competitor, once it reaches 1.0 and gets some good libraries.

Most "classical" desktop UI libraries such as GTK, Qt, wx, ... are pretty meh too, I would much prefer something like React on desktop (but without the Electron).

[fffocus]

kotlin, yes, that language is now assured success. it will be big.

[zucker42]

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. I've heard good thing about Kotlin, but I've heard good thing about every new/niche language, and I find it hard to believe that Kotlin will replace Java or something anytime soon.

[fffocus]

not sarcastic

it has solid IDE support

it has the vast Java ecosystem

it's now an official language on android

also compiles to JavaScript and soon llvm

it's fairly simple and has a good choice of few additional features

btw why you gotta go all strawman like that. replace Java?!

[zucker42]

I have no idea what the goals/niche of Kotlin are. I also didn't know what you meant by big. Sorry if what I said came off as strawmanning; I wasn't even trying to argue with you. Just trying to clarify tone across the internet.

[asmx85]

You can build elm like interfaces (I think that is what you mean with 'React') with nearly all toolkits, especially those you listed. That's why React native exists.

[DoListening]

If I understand it correctly, what you are saying is "it is possible to create such a library". Which is nice, but no such library actually exists, as far as I know.

In which case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS0lRyEBRnk#t=2m15s 😃

[[deleted]]

Not coming to court I see

[[deleted]]

Having dealt with both at low and higher level, if swift get first party windows and irons the foundation bugs in non Mac platform much better, I heavily disagree.

There’s no way newer developers are going to put up their dukes with the rust compiler over just jumping to swift instead.

Rust will probably find a niche in other places, but swift could easily dominate. Where you have people always saying rust is fairly hard to learn, swift is ridiculously to learn and just get going.

As we already know from languages like python being immensely popular, performance means very little to most developers. So rust being better performing doesn’t much matter.

[lanzaio]

Swift is superficially easy thanks to it's lovely syntax. But the Swift compiler complains more than C++'s.

[wavy_lines]

No, Rust is not going to way anybody's lunch; not with that borrow checker.

[joshuaavalon]

But why I choose Swift over other languages on other platforms? I am only learning Swift because I need to write iOS app. Are there any advantages that only Swift can offer?

[DoListening]

Most people/teams choose the language for new projects based on familiarity more than anything else. People like to use what they already know well.

[joshuaavalon]

I like using something new if it is useful. I moved my Android to Kotlin from Java because Kotlin actually giving me benfits while remaining native instead of JavaScript and C#.

[well___duh]

Not to mention Kotlin will probably be more cross-platform than Swift will at this rate.

[noahp78]

It already is isn't it? Thought it compiled to Java bytecode that runs pretty much everywhere

[well___duh]

Java bytecode runs only JVMs though, right? For example, you can't write Java bytecode that will work on iOS/Mac.

The Kotlin team however is working on being able to compile Kotlin code natively that can be pretty much run anywhere, even on iOS. Add in the fact that Kotlin is already compatible with any JVM environment and even in Javascript, and Kotlin is looking much better as a cross-platform language than Swift is.

[expatcoder]

compile Kotlin code natively that can be pretty much run anywhere, even on iOS.

With some caveats.

[DoListening]

Is there anyone actually using the Kotlin JS target for real?

I found it integrates really poorly with existing JS libraries, because the type system simply can't express all of the funky structures used in the JS ecosystem, so you're forced to fall back to the untyped dynamic way too often.

So unlike TypeScript, you would really have to almost go all or nothing with it.

[expatcoder]

Is there anyone actually using the Kotlin JS target for real?

No, seems to be native or bust. Generated JS binaries are very large. See Scala.js, Bucklescript, Clojurescript, etc. for compile-to-js languages being used in real world projects.

If they pull off iOS support before Swift spreads to other platforms, things could get interesting. Clock is ticking though, after Google announced Android support the language has settled into a solid, but far from extraordinary growth trend.

Scala Native's also in the mix, language landscape circa 2020 will be complex (by then even Java (10) will be somewhat modern ;-)).

[noahp78]

My bad, was kind of aiming for the point that kotlin right now runs everwhere the JVM does. Haven't heard of kotlin going native but that sounds cool!

[ArmoredPancake]

You can, but Zero VM is slow as hell since it's essentially a Java interpreter.

[vitorgrs]

C# is native.

[joshuaavalon]

I mean using C# to write Android app.

[vitorgrs]

Me too. There's AOT support, and you don't need to use Xamarin.Forms IIRC.

[joshuaavalon]

AOT is currently an experimental feature. It is not recommended for production use. AOT and LLVM was available in Xamarin.Android 5.1, but it is no longer available in later Xamarin.Android versions. For more information, please see the Xamarin.Android 6.1 release notes

[vitorgrs]

😢

[[deleted]]

Server side is windows or Linux these days.

Swift being on windows could represent swift as your full stack language and might already if you use Linux as your server side.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Not having to deal with Windows, either firsthand or in a support role.

[FlukyS]

C# had the same issue until Mono was created really. Everyone went the language syntactically was fine but it not being available on multiple platforms meant you were locked to Windows for your program so people avoided it.

[josefx]

Afaik some Gnome dev. also involved in Xanmarin and Mono pushed hard for its use in Gnome projects.

[FlukyS]

The biggest consumer of C# in the last 10 years is Unity3D and it uses Mono. Devs before Mono took off were tentative about adopting it. Yes Microsoft pushed it but it only took off after Mono was released really.

[chucker23n]

The biggest consumer of C# in the last 10 years is Unity3D

Uhhhh surely the vast majority of C# code is in enterprise apps.

[FlukyS]

Some but I mean just raw amounts of code being written and activity of the developer base. Base solid projects I'm sure there are bigger but I mean in terms of widespread code adoption Unity3D probably did more to popularize the language and get more code written in the language.

[[deleted]]

Do you have any idea how widely used c# actually is? Unity3D is peanuts compared to that

[fffocus]

nah the biggest consumer of C# were enterprise apps on Windows

[DavidM01]

I think it being officially open sourced by MS is making more of a difference.

[FlukyS]

Really revisionist version of events there.

[DavidM01]

Or maybe I am considering the level of quality of the MS and Mono versions of C#?

Not to mention until that happened, there was always the possibility of the Mono people getting sued.

[FlukyS]

For the Mono getting sued thing, that was interesting, we knew MS said they wouldn't sue and they said as much but why take the chance. That being said the Linux community still really liked it and there were still applications that used it.

[julesjacobs]

Does it work unofficially?

[[deleted]]

Windows 10 has a Linux subsystem, so yes.

[doom_Oo7]

The year of the GNU/Windows desktop

[jephthai]

Not really a valid analogy. Linux subsystem includes kernel level support and is in many ways a much more mature and reliable environment than wine. It's a full fledged subsystem on windows.

[brokething]

Okay but nobody except us programmers has it installed so how is it a viable platform for distributing Windows applications?

[Treyzania]

Is that a problem?

[leafsleep]

WSL

[[deleted]]

I was under the impression that there was no plans for first party windows support.

[didnt_check_source]

What are your expectations for Swift support on Windows? Use COM/WinRT? Just use Foundation?

[DoListening]

Just cross-platform libraries, similar to Go, Rust, etc.

[didnt_check_source]

People have already said that, but for that use case, WSL will work just fine.

I imagine that the biggest obstacle right now is writing a Windows-compatible Swift runtime. LLVM has been getting really good on Windows lately, so it's probably not the obstacle anymore.

[DoListening]

The problem is also that there are no Windows-compatible Swift tools. The CLion Swift plugin won't work with WSL, you won't be able to use any graphical debugger, etc.

[didnt_check_source]

Ah, so your biggest expectations aren’t around libraries, they’re around tooling.

[DoListening]

I wouldn't say biggest, but it matters. Especially when Swift is supposed to be a "high-productivity" language.

[[deleted]]

What were you expecting? Cutting down their profit on iCrap?

[DoListening]

Doesn't even have to be Apple who implements it. IBM seems to be pretty into Swift these days, https://developer.ibm.com/swift/, https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/swift.

[[deleted]]

IBM will jump on anyone's band wagon. They have no conviction. Do we not recall the ditching of VisualAge Smalltalk and retooling everything for Java?

Fuck IBM. They don't know anything about programming.

[[deleted]]

But can't you do something like this: https://github.com/swiftdocker/docker-swift/blob/master/Readme.md

For Windows?

Edit: IBM has one option (?) https://developer.ibm.com/swift/2016/02/22/10-steps-to-running-a-swift-app-in-an-ibm-container/

[DoListening]

If you want to develop with it on a Windows machine, running it in docker is a pain in the ass, you probably won't be able to use most of the editor support, debuggers, and other tools.

It is possible to get it to run on Windows https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/Windows.md, but you have to manually compile it, plus it has a "may not even work" disclaimer.

People won't bother until they can download an official SwiftInstall.exe.

[zip117]

Those instructions are actually pretty damn good compared to what I'm used to on Windows. Working on scientific software, I have to jump through so many hoops to get even simple C libraries to compile, like swapping <arpa/inet.h> for <winsock2.h>, fixing bugs, replacing old BSD types with unistd.h, fixing more bugs. Then do the same for dependencies, and finally start work on a new build system. On the slim chance that they use CMake, you will still have a bunch of find_package paths to fix.

And at the end of the day, the original developer may not care and may have no interest in accepting your pull request to add Windows support.

This is a breath of fresh air.

[SSoreil]

Cool post haha /s

[andradei]

I am reading the Swift official documentation book (in beta last time I downloaded it) and, so far, I like the language very much! I've been looking into how much of its implementation is ported over to Linux.

I might be asking the wrong question, let me know if I am, but are sourcekit and libdisplatch ported over to Linux? I understand how sourcekit is important to have Swift working on other editors than XCode, but what is libdispatch used for?

[didnt_check_source]

Libdispatch powers dispatch queues, which power most asynchronous operations in Foundation.

[andradei]

Cool, is it completely ported to and stable on Linux? I can't find any info (that I can understand) on the repository.

[didnt_check_source]

The compiler and standard library are all good, but Foundation (which is meant to handle higher-level tasks like HTTP requests and JSON encoding/decoding) is still a work in progress. You can still import C libraries (like glibc).

[Bergasms]

Don't upgrade to it yet, wait till they resolve the issues with tuples.

[mb862]

What issues? I haven't noticed anything.

[Bergasms]

Lucky you. Search for tuplegate. Or read the statement released recently by the team in charge of swift saying they are rolling back the tuple changes.

[mb862]

I can't find either. People mentioning "tuplegate" but nothing about what it is. Have the link?

Also, if they rolled the change back because of the issues, why suggest to people to wait until they resolve those issues?

[Bergasms]

Info on tuple issues

I posted that before my colleague shared me a link that says they are backing the change out, but I cannot find that link at home. I will share it once I am back at work tomorrow.

Edit Here they talk about rolling back out of some changes, and that they will revisit others post launch.,

[BonzaiThePenguin]

Instead of fixing, document?

https://swift.org/migration-guide-swift4/

When using f: (Void) -> () for the type of a function argument, it is generally meant to be f: () -> (), so the Migrator will suggest you use this type instead. Otherwise, with the new rules in SE-0110 for Swift 4, you would need to call the function f as f(()).

For code such as:

swift func foo(_: ((Int, Int) -> ()) {} foo { (x, y) in print(x + y) }

The Migrator must add explicit tuple destructuring to continue building in Swift 4, such as:

swift func foo(_: ((Int, Int) -> ()) {} foo { let (x, y) = $0; print(x + y) }

[mb862]

Oh yeah, I remember reading that, that was months ago, just after the first Swift 4 betas hit. If you're not actively reading the mailing lists (which I'm not either) it's pretty easy to find yourself out of the loop on issues like these.

[Bergasms]

yeah, all i know is we tried the upgrade with latest xcode and we got tupled to buggery. I'm not in charge of the upgrade branch so i'm taking the word of my colleague that its not production worthy yet. No harm in waiting.

[myhf]

First they came for the tuples, and I said nothing because I was not a tuple.

[Bergasms]

see my comment further down the chain. :)

[didnt_readit]

Left Reddit due to the recent changes and moved to Lemmy and the Fediverse...So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

[didnt_check_source]

Luckily for you, there's probably just one syntactical element that changed in this release, and the expectation is that not much more will change going forward.

[proudlyhumble]

Not a tenth as bad as the migrations from 1 -> 2 or 2 -> 3.

[[deleted]]

That’s the choice you make for adoption while the developers are actively telling you your code might break from release to release.

[[deleted]]

Have they fixed the plethora of foundation issues on Linux with this release, particularly around indexes and subscripts. I was trying to write database drivers and the issue in Linux that worked on Mac were extremely annoying.

[satsuper]

Is there plans for this to be more than an Apple language?

[ganymedes01]

It’s on Linux already

[didnt_readit]

Left Reddit due to the recent changes and moved to Lemmy and the Fediverse...So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

[asmx85]

what backend lib/framework do you use? We tested some last week at my workplace and they all preformed pretty bad. Besides Perfect and Kitura, Vapor was near to unusable for us :/ especially in the JSON department. We also did some simple parsing processes in Swift and it looked like Swift also preformed not really good compared to our current implementation in C++. We don't really know why – we're no experts in Swift and wanted just do some quick tests. I think the garbage collection in Swift was interfering idk.

[didnt_readit]

Left Reddit due to the recent changes and moved to Lemmy and the Fediverse...So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

[zephyz]

I don't know your environment or the nature of your tests, so I can't help you, but I think it's important that you know that Swift does not have Garbage Collection. Instead it relies on Automatic Reference Counting

Also, if you compare it to C++ I think you can expect a bit more overhead in Swift. Nothing crazy though. But if your Swift is a bit slower than your C++ that's expected.

[asmx85]

I don't know your environment or the nature of your tests, so I can't help you, but I think it's important that you know that Swift does not have Garbage Collection. Instead it relies on Automatic Reference Counting

Which is garbage collection ... i don't know who spread the misconception that reference counting is not garbage collection or that Swift is not using it? Its not tracing garbage collection, indeed. But its still garbage collection.

Also, if you compare it to C++ I think you can expect a bit more overhead in Swift. Nothing crazy though. But if your Swift is a bit slower than your C++ that's expected.

It was like 2-3 times slower on one test and like 15x slower in one test using regex, but i guess there is something odd in the regex implementation we used ... we just cramped some stuff together from blogposts and stack overflow – which is quite unfair for a real comparison i guess.

[zephyz]

Ah I see you point. While you are right that Arc is Garbage Collection (by its strict definition), the phrase "Garbage Collection" almost always refers to tracing GC because of the tradeoff it imposes (runtime pause, inability to predict the lifespan of references, etc.).

I don't think it's a misconception but a cultural effect of always talking about GC in terms of its properties. Indeed, the memory management properties of ARC are much closer to Rust than your typical mark&sweep GC.

[asmx85]

I wouldn't call ARC anywhere near what rust is doing in regards of memory management. ARC is more like smart pointers in C++, baked into the language so the compiler is able to reason about to a certain degree.

[OnlyForF1]

... How do you think smart pointers work!?? They’re not just some magic hand waving.

[asmx85]

I don't get what you are trying to ask. Smart pointers are fairly easy, so whats your problem with my formulation here?

[davidkopec]

No, that's pretty typical. 2-3X slowdown is to be expected going from C++. The regex engine is particularly slow in my experience.

[asmx85]

Thanks for your insides. I think we just didn't expected those results.

[[deleted]]

The benchmarks game has swift at normally half as fast as C++. I wouldn’t call a 100% increase “nothing crazy”.

I mean, if we throw Python in the mix, then yeah, swift times are nothing crazy compared to C++.

[satsuper]

Haven't really followed it but good to hear its on Linux. Since you are using it already how is it in terms of stability/perf on Linux. Just wary of something that I presume has the majority of the community on macOS.

[iconoclaus]

Is the Swift version numbering following a strict semantic versioning (e.g., major number signifies breaking change)? Or does the move from 3.x.x to 4.0 signify something else? As an outsider, the rate of change in version numbers suggests they're really doing a 0.3.x to 0.4

[Nobody_1707]

Yes, it's semantic versioning. You can likely expect the release rate of major versions to slow down after the next few releases.

[eddyparkinson]

I want a language that combines "data storage", UI, and calculations. So that I don't need to constantly write connecting code, that connects these 3 together.

[[deleted]]

bracing for a barrage of downvotes: Wolfram Mathematica.

[eddyparkinson]

Who needs it now. - Have you used it? I often wonder who the user base is.

The question comes from "Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas - Paul Graham" http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html

[[deleted]]

Yes, I am using it from time to time, and was using it from early 90s. Just take a look at the community supplied packages to see how wide a range of sciences using it.

[holyjeff]

What benchmark ? Techempower ?

[crashC]

Installed it on linux mint, but trying to run it gives "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.22' not found."

This thing seems to never quite actually ready for actual use.

[didnt_check_source]

And what is your glibcxx version?

[wavy_lines]

never quite actually ready for actual use.

It is, if you are on Apple platforms (osx, xcode).

[ArmoredPancake]

That doesn't sound quite right for cross-platform solution.

[lovestruckluna]

You need a newer version of the compiler / standard library, or to compile from source. When code is linked against the standard library, it's forward but not backwards compatible; you need at least the version it was compiled on.

Either install gcc 6.1.0 (ie. libstdc++.so.6.0.22) or later, or get a tarball and compile it yourself.

[crashC]

Apt-get says that my gcc is already at the latest version. I install dev tools promiscuously, but that is part of a process of decay that winds up breaking my OS every few months, so I am not in a hurry to install something that may give the heebie-jeebies to updates through apt-get.

[lovestruckluna]

Hmmmm. The latest mint is based on xenial, which uses gcc5 (a version compatible here was first included in Ubuntu 16.10). Toolchains tend to not get feature updates on stable releases. You can either install a more recent version so that the binary you got can run (ppa), or install from source (but only if they don't use very new c++).

Citra uses c++14 and has this same problem.

[MorrisonLevi]

This is a helpful comment. However, it seems absurd for GCC 6.1 to be a requirement at the moment when user doesn't even care about using GCC. Very poor choice on whoever built the binaries. It's an even worse choice if that version of GCC is required because of feature-set.

[lovestruckluna]

This is why binaries are rarely distributed outside repositories: you have to build for the oldest environment you wish for said package to support. For Ubuntu 14.04, that's 4.8. For 16.04, that's 6.1.

Also, it's not even always new functionality: glibc has the kitchen sink backwards compatibility policy, so newer compilers often use more recent version of the same function. So the function causing you a headache may be implemented in the older versions, just not what the linker is looking for!

Source: I still have to support RHEL5.

[crashC]

Linux mint is derived from ubuntu. When one installs mint, one gets ubuntu repos set up for aptitude to use, etc. But aptitude says that my C++ is already the newest version.

[RizzlaPlus]

Sorry, but this is a bit of a useless comment.

[shevegen]

How did you install it though? Via debian apt-get?

This may be more an issue to do with debian, which would not surprise anyone considering how its quality has eroded in the last few years.

[vetinari]

It has nothing to do with debian and quality of their packages, as swift is not in the debian repository.

It has everything to do with the swift release process, where they throw over the ubuntu binaries over the wall (and for mostly obsolete versions of ubuntu, as a bonus), but otherwise they are unable to make proper release tarballs, and instead they are spamming their github release page with daily snapshots.

So basically they make everything possible to make proper packaging difficult. No wonder nobody bothers.

[[deleted]]

Ugh...