
Google may be considering Swift as a ‘first class’ language for Android - cnbuff410
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2016/04/07/google-facebook-uber-swift/#gref
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takno
Seems phenomenally improbable. It would basically require a ground-up rewrite
of the entire app layer of Java just so that lazy iOS developers can do an
even more half assed job of porting their apps over.

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mixedCase
I'd prefer Go, and it seems weird they would consider Swift first but hey, as
long as the JVM dies and we get native code I'm a happy man.

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koder2016
Won't help performance, that's for sure. Anyway, the post doesn't mention
Dart, so has no credibility whatsoever.

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xori
I'm still surprised that Google hasn't been pushing Dart harder than it has.

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wrg
Why not Rust or Go? The only reason they would pick Swift is because of
existing uptake

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seren
To entice IOS developers to port their app on Android more easily ?

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wrg
This also. It seems purely like a calculated move to undermine iOS as much as
possible, but it does make you wonder if it's the Right Thing to do. There are
better languages out there that have had much more development take place. And
it's not like Google have commit rights or control over Swift. It's sad how
they haven't really learned from the Oracle case.

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thevibesman
> It seems purely like a calculated move to undermine iOS as much as possible

I really don't see how this is the case; do you consider Microsoft's Project
Islandwood[1] to be a move to undermine iOS? Both seem like an attempt to
offer developers more choice and a reason to work on the platform. If this is
to undermine anything, I think it would be the various 'hybrid'-webapp
solutions as writing a Swift app seems like a better way to "write once, run
anywhere" than a JavaScript hybrid solution.

> And it's not like Google have commit rights or control over Swift. It's sad
> how they haven't really learned from the Oracle case.

I don't see how not having commit rights is an issue. The licensing terms of
Java are/were very different from Swift. Getting behind an Apache-licensed
open-source language does not necessarily mean Google is not free to control
their own version of the language (why would they?). I don't see the
copyrightable API issue coming up with Apple and Swift because of how the open
source Foundation has been encouraged (and I really think Apple wouldn't mind
/ will encourage open-source ports of other Frameworks).

[1]: [https://developer.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/bridges/ios](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/bridges/ios)

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x5n1
Is Swift actually a good language, what's good about it? From a general
perspective. Been using Go, and love it. Many innovative changes to basically
be a C for our century. What's Swift, what have its designers learned from the
past to make a better language?

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ridiculous_fish
Swift includes a lot of high-level features and modern best practices. Off the
top of my head, nice stuff that Swift has that Go does not include generics,
value-type collections, Optional instead of implicit nil, algebraic data types
through enums, let bindings for immutable values, pattern matching, Unicode
support at the grapheme cluster level, a REPL, tuples, try/catch error
handling, and functional constructs like map/filter/flatMap.

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kagia
This article should be taken with a good pinch of salt. It seems to be more
speculation than anything else...

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jaxondu
My first thought. Then looking at what Microsoft is doing by offering
compelling tool for cross platform development, then there is a possibility
that Google is working to offer its own Xamarin like solution. Can only dream
it will be one single GUI API for developing apps for Android, iOS, Windows,
WebAssembly and Linux desktops using Swift. If Google has this cross platform
GUI API, then many are likely to abandon Cocoa API. Google probably sees API
as platform and not language.

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sunstone
Curly brackets. Yuck.

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alphacome
can't wait that Google make this decision

