Re:Swift is Open Source
by steveklabnik on Thursday December 03, 2015 @12:44PM
(#10671101)
Not to mention, bootstrapping in a language that's not stable yet can be.... quite a pain.
Re:Swift is Open Source
by 102030485868 on Thursday December 03, 2015 @04:42PM
(#10672880)
Hahaha, I'm amazed that the Rust developers were able to do that.
Saying it was "quite a pain" is the understatement of the year.
Re:Swift is Open Source
by steveklabnik on Thursday December 03, 2015 @07:22PM
(#10673773)
Yup. I really think it was worth it though, it taught us a lot about how to make the language.
Mind, are you not worried at all that it may have taught you a lot... about how to make a language for writing compilers in? (paraphrasing Chris Lattner)
Re:Swift is Open Source
by steveklabnik on Friday December 04, 2015 @12:03PM
(#10677462)
That is indeed a concern, I agree with Chris here.
The solution we had, though, is Servo. It being developed alongside as well meant we had another significant, non-compiler project, which guided us out of that trap.
By using C++ they could ramp up the compiler much faster and rely all improvements done to LLVM.
Eventually if the language succeeds in the market at large, they can decide to bootstrap it.
Although I am a fan of bootstrapping, I also see a good value to expend development resources elsewhere until a language reaches wider adoption.