There are 10 different answers for how to take a substring by index+len, depending on which version of Swift. They even changed how arrays as function parameters work between versions.

So then just use one version of Swift

Not viable to stay on an old version, especially doing iPhone dev. The real answer back in the Swift 1-4 times was to just use ObjC instead, it still had full support.

> they do a fantastic job supporting legacy APIs, frameworks, and devices

They do not.

They talk a good game, but the development tools, bright and shiny, but mostly work.

Mostly, is not good enough.

While they have so much mind share in the USA they are unavoidable. But from a developer perspective they are dire

As of two years ago. I find it hard to believe they have changed

I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem in one form or the other 40 years and that’s definitely not true compared to Microsoft.

Most recently they dropped support for 32 bit Mac and iOS apps. But before that it was dropping support for PPC apps and 68K apps.

On the hardware side, the funniest was they dropped support for my Core 2 Duo Mac Mini and I could still install a supported version of Windows 7 on it.