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A comment on Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up. Parent comment

Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by optimiz3 on Sunday March 05, 2017 @03:36PM (#13798438)
As a Linux/Windows developer, Swift remains a toy language as it cannot be used to do develop useful applications for Linux and Windows, where I make all of my money.
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Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by coldtea on Sunday March 05, 2017 @05:52PM (#13799344)
>As a Linux/Windows developer

As a Linux/Windows developer you are not the target audience (which I already addressed).

Besides, just because you can't use it, it doesn't make it a toy language, just a language that doesn't have support (or full support) for Linux.

A toy language has a specific meaning, it's not a generic work for "language I can't use professionally on my platform/industry".

I can't use Forth to make web apps either, which is were I make all of my money, but it's not a toy language by any means.

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Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by JdeBP on Monday March 06, 2017 @04:01AM (#13801532)
Yes, it's wrong to be dismissive like that. But no, "toy language" does not have a specific meaning. It is a slang insult, not a proper technical term.
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Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by Longhanks on Sunday March 05, 2017 @04:06PM (#13798633)
As a Linux/Windows developer, you probably are not the primary target audience of Swift.

As a developer for Apple platforms, am I right to consider C# or Java toy languages, too?

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Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by thehardsphere on Sunday March 05, 2017 @04:39PM (#13798867)
There are many Java apps for Mac and Apple used to provide its own implementation of the JRE.
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Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by optimiz3 on Sunday March 05, 2017 @04:12PM (#13798681)
There are thousands of Apple and Android C# apps (see Xamarin).
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Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by coldtea on Sunday March 05, 2017 @05:53PM (#13799358)
Which, again, is besides the point. The parent was mocking the idea that just because a language doesn't support a platform it can be called a "toy language".

C# that he mentioned wouldn't be toy languages even if there were 0 Apple and Android C# apps. It would just be a totally professional Windows language with no Android/iOS support.

C# was professional even when it only supported Windows (and partially FreeBSD), before Mono came along...

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Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by comex on Sunday March 05, 2017 @06:07PM (#13799428)
> C# was professional even when it only supported Windows (and partially FreeBSD), before Mono came along...

As well as the decade-plus when Mono existed but wasn't owned by Microsoft, making cross-platform support merely incidental or even a negative from Microsoft's perspective.

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Re:Why I left Mac for Windows: Apple has given up by ufmace on Sunday March 05, 2017 @06:38PM (#13799589)
Seems like a bit much to say that it's a toy language because it can't (currently) be used to write Linux or Windows applications. There's probably tens of thousands of developers at least making a living developing Swift applications. I bet there's more people making money writing Swift than Haskell and Lisp combined.
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