Dominik Wagner: ‘On My Misalignment With Apple’s Love Affair With Swift’

Dominik Wagner:

  • It seems to have been driven by the needs of the compiler and the gaps that needed to be filled for the static analyzer. Those seem to have been super-charged instead of catering to app developer’s actual needs: efficient, hassle free, productive (iOS) App development.

  • It is meant to offer progressive disclosure and be simple, to be used in playgrounds and learning. At the same time learning and reading through the Swift book and standard library is more akin to mastering C++. It is quite unforgiving, harsh, and complex.

This is a really thoughtful, measured take against Swift. I know a lot of developers love Swift, but I also know many who share similar misgivings about it, primarily that it isn’t optimized specifically for writing great apps.

★ Monday, 11 June 2018