On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 at 17:59:35 UTC, Joakim wrote:
A Wired article about Swift coming to the server, particularly
after the imminent open-sourcing, that also mentions D as an
alternative, especially since it's written by the same guy who
wrote about D for Wired last year:
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/apples-swift-ios-programming-language-is-being-remade-for-data-centers/
Will be interesting to see how Swift does, a good natural
experiment for those pushing D to focus on one niche before
expanding, as Swift is doing really well on one of the most
important development platforms today, iOS, before expanding
onto the server. Of course, Apple is unlikely to really push
it on the server, other than open-sourcing and accepting
patches, so they have a built-in excuse if it doesn't do well.
;)
Pretty much what we guessed: they're expanding the Swift platform
but Apple is not going to develop for Windows/Android, though
others are free to do so -
"In open-sourcing Swift, Apple has two main goals in mind. The
first and most obvious is to make Swift code more portable and
versatile, enabling its use in projects outside of apps for
Apple’s platforms.
The company’s long-term vision is even more ambitious. “We think
[Swift] is how really everyone should be programming for the next
20 years,” Federighi told Ars. “We think it’s the next major
programming language.
“A number of developers, including enterprise developers like
IBM, very early on as they began developing their mobile
applications in Swift, really wanted to be able to take the
talents that their developers were developing and even some of
the code and be able to deploy it in the cloud, for instance,”
Federighi continued. “We thought the best way [to enable that],
ultimately, was open source.”
The other goal is educational: when developers put time into
learning Swift (or when educators take the time to teach it),
Apple wants those skills to be more broadly applicable.
“We’re working with educators, and many professors are very
interested in teaching Swift because it’s such an expressive
language that’s such a great way to introduce all sorts of
programming concepts,” Federighi said. “And enabling it as open
source makes it possible for them to incorporate Swift really as
part of the core curriculum.”
When we spoke with developers about the first year of Swift back
in June, Swift’s teachability was definitely a major selling
point. As useful as Swift might be to communicate programming
ideas, it’s ultimately more useful to be able to take that
knowledge and use it in multiple places."
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/12/craig-federighi-talks-open-source-swift-and-whats-coming-in-version-3-0/
