It's not what programming languages do, it's what they shepherd you to

Re:It's not what programming languages do, it's what they sh... by jamil7 on Friday March 27, 2020 @07:54AM (#22702114)

I think Swift more or less hits this sweet spot for me. As mentioned Kotlin is also very close but comes with some baggage. Crystal and Nim are on the horizon and are promising this kind of combination of ergonomics, correctness and performance.

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Re:It's not what programming languages do, it's what they sh... by wool_gather on Friday March 27, 2020 @11:45AM (#22703853)

Swift has a long road ahead for the very "low" end, i.e. replacing C or even C++. It's missing, or has extremely awkward versions (`UnsafeOMGPointer`) of various pieces right now, [and some may never even be added][0].

[0]:https://forums.swift.org/t/bit-fields-like-in-c/34651/7

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Re:It's not what programming languages do, it's what they sh... by jamil7 on Sunday March 29, 2020 @05:06AM (#22717443)

Yeah that makes sense, I guess in my mind I don't see it as a C or C++ replacement as with Rust. To me it fits as a slightly higher level, safe, general purpose language with pretty good performance for most tasks you throw at it. After working with it for a year I feel very productive and that I can trust my code will work if it compiles. A similar feeling to Elm or maybe Rust but yet to spend a longer time with Rust.

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Re:It's not what programming languages do, it's what they sh... by wool_gather on Sunday March 29, 2020 @04:26PM (#22722392)

Yeah, fair, and I agree with your take; there's just this longstanding idea/goal that Swift can (or will be able to) do it all.

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