I really like swift going beyond Apple. Particularly the port to android is IMHO crucial, however, now they are in the UI cross platform hell. Let us see if Apple is playing this better than Microsoft. Unfortunately, I have little hope. The only native contenders in the field right now are IMHO are react native and flutter which are both UI toolkits first and language second. Which I find gruesome.
I believe that there's strong community interest in some kind of Swift UI framework for Android, though, and so there's a substantial chance that a third party solution will appear.
So is it necessary for the swift team to try get swift ui onto android, versus a developer building their app "backend/functionality" in swift, compiling it down for both ios and android, then bridging the android bindings with a UI made in kmp etc
I recently learnt that amo and protonmail use this solution but instead of swift android, they were using uniffi-rs and seemed to have great results, I think proton ditched react native for this solution, which to me sounds like a more streamlined way of getting native performance without needing the overhead of managing multiple language. I guess we will have to see how mature swift android gets and if it can replace uniffi-rs etc which would save even more time
the proton mail team claimed they will write a technical writeup soon
It's a nearly impossible task. Just ask Qt, who have been at this for thirty years.
i would love to see how Swift will do cross platform gui.
The Windows ports of AppKit in both likely trace their lineages back to Yellow Box, which was the Windows port of AppKit that Apple briefly made available prior to the release of OS X 10.0.
Starting with iOS 26, new UIKit and AppKit features are implemented by "native" SwiftUI (specifically, Liquid Glass's implementation). In recent years they have also been replacing UIKit/AppKit-backed SwiftUI views with "native" SwiftUI implementations.
But besides this technical change I don't think Apple has any desire to bring SwiftUI to other platforms.
BTW: https://skip.tools has bridged it to Compose. Your SwiftUI code runs in native Swift on Android.
Depends on what you think fancy things are. Both C# and .net are busy releasing a lot of features.
You're forgetting that C# is a 25-year-old language at this time. The exciting features they release are things like "access native memory allocation in a GC language", "native Arm64 support", "support for post-quantum cryptography", "tensor support" etc. while already running on all the platforms that Swift is only now announcing as achievements.
And, as it stands, Dotnet is much further along in the multi-platform game than Swift. As far as I know, none of the Swift-based UI stuff is being ported to, let alone going to be usable on non-Apple platforms.
1. https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/whats-new-in-net-10/
I wouldn't really call Flutter "native".
I don't have a strong enough grasp of where React Native is at now. It was severely lacking when I looked at it circa 2018. But then we needed to call in to our own native code libraries, so we were probably quite niche.
Xamarin.Forms worked well enough, but the transition to MAUI has been full of woe and even more bugs and weird edge case functionality than Xamarin had.
Flutter is not a language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flutter_(software)
From that page:
>Flutter apps are written in the Dart language.
just mixing appkit and language in the same phrase implies swift.
It was a simpler Swift, I could understand all of it. Just look at the explosion of keywords in Swift.
Considering the static typing, guard statements, protocols, lack of ++/-- operators (Lattner's argument was convincing), let/var, being able to make function parameters immutable, being able to lock symbols down to the file level, easy integration with c languages, etc..
I have not used SwiftUI, so I cannot judge it, but I do not think any issues with it are compelling arguments against Swift as a language (that I have read).
Lattner is my modern-age programming-hero. I'm glad to see FreeBSD will be able to share the love soon enough.
That's why you end up with a compiler that barfs at even the simplest SwiftUI code because Swift's type system is overly complicated and undecidable. And makes the compiler dog slow.
That's why you end up with 200+ keywords [1] with more added each release.
That's how you end up with idiocy like `guard let self = self else { return }` (I think they "fixed" this with some syntax sugar) because making if statements understand nulls is beyond the capabilities of heroes apparently.
And this is just surface level that immediately came to mind.
[1] It's not a typo: https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1841251621004538183
I feel like if it was a good language, it should make things better; of course there may be some other confounding factors but it's hard to not link the software quality problem to the Swift push.
While anyone working at Big N company is likely a far better dev than me, I must admit that on the surface, I have not been too impressed with the quality from any them in the past decade or so.
I am less inclined to blame the languages than I am to blame the perverse incentives of these large companies and some of the personality types they sometimes seek to hire. Though, I do understand there are a lot of great devs at those orgs. Just in my experience, greatness doesn't always strongly correlate with ability to call the shots.
But my thinking is that the language maybe makes things worse ? If you hire people that already are not that competent and force them to use a language that is harder to master it cannot help.
Something I have noted is that many "OG" Mac indie devs have complained about the language and their software quality seems to have gone done a bit as well (but it may have to do with the framework churn as well...).
But yeah, clearly it's impossible to really know from an external observer point of view.
Oh, sick! Thank you for bring this to my attention. I didn't even know this interview existed. I watched Lattner's three interviews with Lex (though I'm not a indifferent about Lex). I do love Theprimeagen though -- he represents us neurodiverse devs well.
> a compiler that barfs at even the simplest SwiftUI code
I have never used Swift UI. I honestly have used Swift mainly for automating a lot of stuff I used to do with Applescript or little scripts for minor things. I have never actually used Swift for any GUI application development.
> That's why you end up with 200+ keywords [1] with more added each release.
Sure, like I previously said, no language is perfect. I am less concerned about the number of total keywords vs. the average number of keywords required to accomplish what I need. I do not feel like I honestly have had to use any more than what I commonly user in .NET/C#. In fact, I think C# might honestly be worse.
https://github.com/e3b0c442/keywords
> `guard let self = self else { return }`
I think you can do something like this as Swift 5 or 6:
`guard let self else { return }`
Don't quote me though (It's also not much better looking, imo).
That's the thing though: it affects you even if you don't use it. E.g. Swift's type system was made more complex because SwiftUI needed opaque types, function builders etc. and that was shipped with little consideration or design.
> I am less concerned about the number of total keywords vs. the average number of keywords required to accomplish what I need
Onve again, they affect you even if you don't use them. Because the compiler and the libs and the systems etc. now have to aware of these, and use them extensively.
E.g.
--- start quote ---
The Compiler's semantic analysis simply looks for the raw source string "DispatchQueue.main", and adds the hidden @_unsafeMainActor attribute
https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1986705344748220529
--- end quote ---
It's not language design. It's a minefield of unspecified hacks and workarounds. And the list is growing.
Speaking of SwiftUI, and how it affects the compiler https://x.com/krzyzanowskim/status/1818881302394814717
> In fact, I think C# might honestly be worse.
C# is 25 years old, Swift is 11, and already basically on par with C#? ;)
Also, "this language could he worse" is not a good argument :)
BTW that chart is outdated. It shows C# 8 (it's 14 now) and Swift 5. Swift now has twice as many keywords as C# 8 :) And as many as the Visual Basic 2019 (at 207 keywords).
> I think you can do something like this as Swift 5 or 6
Yeah, I vaguely remember something like that :)
> (…) python3 (…)
Wait, which part requires Python, and why? And is that only for FreeBSD, or in general? And is that something which will change? Feels very weird that a compiled systems language is dependent on a high-level scripting language.
https://github.com/SWI-Prolog/swipl-devel/blob/master/tests/...
It’s also weird to include Java and Swift in that list considering both afaik are maintained by a separate foundation. Java from Sun is even predominantly basically OpenJDK with some remaining proprietary Sun / Oracle bits but it’s the reference open source implementation used by most everyone.
Note that Oracle contributes around 90% of the work to OpenJDK. If they decided to stop working on it, there would be a big gap to fill.
I’d say though that Oracle is highly unlikely to stop working on Java and Google is still invested in the JDK even though they’re trying to shift new code in this space towards Kotlin (another “corp owned” language)
For a significant portion of time Python was funded by Google, Meta and Facebook and maybe some other corps.
Zig doesn’t have any serious adoption in the industry yet but if/when it does I’d expect corps to be hiring the language devs.
JS is a consortium but it’s filled primarily with Google and Apple engineers.
Same goes for C/C++ lot of Apple, MS and Google engineers.
Elixir I’m not sure about. Rust was largely turns out employed by Amazon until the most recent culling.
It’s not surprising. This is technically difficult work and if the language is important to a corp they’ll hire the maintainers. There needs to be a funding source and in the industry that typically means a for profit company paying the salary of the people moving things forward. Indeed - it’s one of the things Rust is struggling with for now.
Rust, Julia, Typescript on the other hand are governed by Corps. They are not community projects.
Elixir is BDFL (good one) last I checked. Dont know if they became a company or foundation.
Zig is for all purposes a good example of community governed project. Itcs in production at Bun and TigerBeetle. But also, its not yet production ready (v1.0). So their current trend make sense.
But I could've been wrong with JS and C. Not sure about their governance now that I think about it.
Rust is explicitly a community project having been born out of a non-profit, and if you’re discounting corp-funded but community driven that’s definitely Rust. If not, please indicate the corp that’s driving Rust.
Zig is a BDFL project like Python was (not sure how it is these days) - community contributes sure, but Andrew makes the big calls and directional changes.
Non-profit doesn't mean community project. Rust foundation is a non-profit 501-c(6). Which is a non-profit category for trade unions and stuff. It's not a charity categorization. It's run by corporate members and works only for the members which are - surprise corporates. A community member like you or me doesn't have any say (Unless you have $325k per year to pay) - https://rustfoundation.org/get-involved/. This is the same case with Linux foundation as well. It's NOT a community project. The only difference is, Linus has more say cos trademark is on him.
PSF and Zig foundation are charity / commuinty projects cos they are non-profit 501 c(3). It's categorised as public charity or for the good of people. You and I can have more say in it. NOT THE CASE WITH RUST.
One can argue about that - but probably not in context of the sub-thread:
> With the single commercial party owning it ...
I would like to respectfully disagree with you there as well. The above was the context. I was replying to this which opened the conversation.
Not to mention, end users and consumers don't get a say in the corp funded projects. Everything works as long as it aligns with the goals of the corp. Not otherwise.
Most recently they dropped support for 32 bit Mac and iOS apps. But before that it was dropping support for PPC apps and 68K apps.
On the hardware side, the funniest was they dropped support for my Core 2 Duo Mac Mini and I could still install a supported version of Windows 7 on it.
They do not.
They talk a good game, but the development tools, bright and shiny, but mostly work.
Mostly, is not good enough.
While they have so much mind share in the USA they are unavoidable. But from a developer perspective they are dire
As of two years ago. I find it hard to believe they have changed
Ladybird browser team planned to start using Swift in their codebase, but it hasn't happen yet.
> Ladybird browser team planned to start using Swift in their codebase, but it hasn't happen yet.
But I think “why” remains a valid question when you could make a safe pick like Node, Python etc. I really like Swift as a language but I’d still struggle to justify using it outside of iOS.
Dead projects are
- Kitura https://github.com/Kitura/Kitura
- Perfect https://github.com/PerfectlySoft/Perfect
Don't know of large organizations using it in production, the vibe I get is that it's useful for an iOS developer who wants to deploy a small server for their product without learning Python or Javascript.
You could certainly use it at larger scale, but you have to justify giving up the big ecosystems of its competitors.
I think they were just talking about the language features, not building web services generally
Most of what makes Rust's safety powerful is that lifetime analysis is universal and highly granular. Things like no dangling references to local variables, no 'collection cycles', handling parametric code, etc. are basic features that Swift can't provide. On top of it all, the whole system is ruinously complicated compared to Rust's type system. That's the sad reality of what happens when you try to implement something so fundamental as an extra bolt-on to a language that can't properly accomidate it.
Swift is also more conducive to "old style" retain mode imperative UI frameworks like AppKit (sometimes declarative and/or immediate mode doesn't fit the bill), which has to date been a major weak point for Rust.
> a more gentle learning curve ... and generally more approachable syntax.
This is all the more reason it's not a peer. The heavyweight class Rust belongs to (which includes things like Sepples, ATS, Ada/SPARK, D) are as a rule not approachable things. All of them are serious industrial tools whose target audience are experienced professionals that prioritize extremely broad functionality and flexibility in output. What the input looks like, or the cost of learning to operate these tools is not even a consideration for this audience. Swift doesn't fit this bill. It simply compromises too much for things that this class of language isn't concerned with. People reaching for a new language in this class aren't thinking about how easy it is to learn, or even how nice it is to use. Rust abandoned ML-family syntax to babyduck C++ at massive cost to its "niceness".
On syntax, do you mean semantics? Syntactically they're both generic curly-brace algol stuff with minor differences at best. Semantically Rust is certainly more complicated.
> which has to date been a major weak point for Rust.
It's very ironic, given Rust's original purpose was to replace C++ as the implementation language for Firefox. Retained mode GUIs have unfortunately fallen by the wayside due to a number of factors, it's not just unique to Rust. If a language hasn't inherited a legacy retained mode lib, it's not likely it'll get a decent one unless it's really lucky. Unfortunate, because you're right, retained mode GUIs absolutely have their upsides and web browsers aren't a solid replacement. They're just complicated to implement, and computers are fast enough now that the much simpler immediate mode paradigm is the choice for every new framework being written. It is what it is.
It's been two years since I was an iOSSwift programmer, but the concurrent/parallel facilities were quite woeful. Memory protection no nonexsistant
I do not miss it. This might be useful for porting Apple software, but do not start new projects with it.
Rust has a more explicit and strict approach to ownership/borrowing for sure, but I’d argue Swift has worked to be memory safe be default since the start, with ARC, no unchecked pointer arithmetic in normal code, etc. it’s still tightly coupled to Apple platforms, but the swiftlang teams has been hard at work changing that and I think it’s a fine language to start new projects with in 2025.
But what Swift lacked (in my day) was any support for parallelism.
They wrapped `fork` in a lot of mumbo jumbo, but it was just `fork`
May as well use C
Exclusivity is guaranteed by the compiler, and Apple has integrated tagged pointers on arm while Linux/x86 is still thinking about it.
I played around with their threads and found it was trivial to corrupt memory and crash.
Plus, most of the open source libs are one person's weekend projects, from 3 years ago...
It's a great language, but nowadays tooling/ecosystem and build systems are key to success.
Worth noting that Gradle's long list of capabilities can sometimes be as much of a liability (or at least a frustration) as it is a boon. A great many projects don't need even a fifth of its complexity.
I think I have always seen it used in a relatively "simple" way. But that might be... "relative". :)
Basically, as a result of dependencies working only with certain versions of Gradle, it's very easy for an project with moderate to high complexity to wind up in a huge tangled mess when updating anything — updating Gradle might require you to update your dependencies, but all your dependencies might not support the version of Gradle you updated to, and the errors that get thrown as a result will be generic and won't tell you as much, sending you on a goose chase. This chain of events can also be set off by upgrading a single library for some feature you need.
It also makes it a pain to read others' Gradle files since there's no agreed upon standard, with everybody doing it a little bit differently.
In contrast, in the several years after switching my Apple platform projects to Swift Package Manager and away from CocoaPods, it's been rare for either toolchain or library upgrades to cause any sort of problem, and broadly speaking there's only a single correct way to write Swift package files, which makes them easier to read and work on.
[0]: https://vapor.codes
I meant to point out that there is no apple native cloud solution where you can run swift on apple hardware.
So if your iOS app needs to talk to a backend that you want to develop and host, you need to run that backend on an OS with cloud support, like Linux, some other Unix or windows. But not macOS or some other "Apple cloud" hosting.
For reasons stated above, you might in that case choose Swift.
IBM at one point offered Swift "serverless" lambdas/cloud functions, which made me briefly hopeful that Apple could do the same, but that service was deprecated years ago, and Apple has shown no motion there.
also, congrats, the swift and freebsd are ambitious in terms of new deployment platforms and compatibility! (see embedded swift, oci freebsd containers, freebsd on firecracker)
That shared history goes back a LONG way. The base components from FreeBSD that are in macOS are absolutely ancient. I think the most modern shared components are just the userland tools.
So I don't think it would make much difference at all.
weak reasoning, as it might just be a supply/demand and not a product quality question
https://www.swift.org/install/linux/ points to https://hub.docker.com/_/swift, which has images for Red Hat, Amazon Linux, maybe others.
What can I say I’m a fan.
There's all sorts of little things that Swift on non-Apple platforms just don't have yet. Little footguns because the Swift rewrite of Foundation isn't quite equivalent yet.