

Ask HN: Now open source, what will you use swift for? - 0xCMP

Now that apple has made it open source I assume swift will be used in server programming now, cross platform development, and etc. What are you most excited for and is swift the right tool for those things?
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dozzie
It will in more or less the same amount as Objective-C, meaning, it actually
won't.

ObjC suffered greatly from not having a standard container library. What
delivered GNUstep was far, far too little for widespread use, and you needed
to actually pull in the whole framework.

Even if Swift will have a container library, it has tough competition that was
carried though designing phase, with the result of not being composed purely
of edge cases ([http://blog.metaobject.com/2015/05/i-am-jealous-of-
swift.htm...](http://blog.metaobject.com/2015/05/i-am-jealous-of-swift.html)).

And it's not obvious how would Swift interact with C or C++ libraries
(meaning: ABI and/or an equivalent of FFI).

All in all, I don't see any reason at all to use Swift as a server-side
language. Extracting it from MacOS simply cripples it too much, and the
language itself adds virtually nothing to the landscape.

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ramon
Maybe it will be exciting for mobile multiplatform technology. Where Swift is
the technology blanket where my templating technology will be.

It's in a interesting moment because react.js native is here and it's looking
for that space as well, maybe it's Apple's latest shot into trying to make a
technology popular.

I want whatever technology to have a Gulp package, after there's something in
Gulp I can look at it, otherwise I'm not looking into it, I'm a Gulp addict
:).

Best Regards,

~~~
romanovcode
Gulp package? Gulp is a task runner, why would you need some kind of "Swift
Gulp Package". It can exist on it's own.

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brudgers
The open questions in my view: At the end of 2015 what sort of tool support
will be available and how much library support will there be? Those are the
things that will make or break Swift once it has to compete for adoption
outside Apple's closed ecosystem.

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Frenchiie
Unless it's faster than Java or offers an amazing feature i doubt it.

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zerr
I see less and less Golang :)

