Yea, I noticed this in the undocumented API's, but haven't played much with it. It's definitely cleaner than C#'s reflection implementation, but more limited as well. Though for most uses, knowing the limitations solves most of the issues the OP has.

This presentation covers some of the reflection API in Swift: http://www.realm.io/news/swift-unchartered-territory-swift-i...

While it is clearly still somewhat limited, it does seem like there is potential for it to evolve into a really robust reflection API.

I disagree. Right now it doesn't seem like a lot of things aren't possible in swift unless there is a LOT of undocumented API.

Dynamic method compilation that you would need to make an equivalent of DynamicProxy just doesn't seem possible. What's funny is that the #1 thing I would state is not possible in Swift is Core Data.

I am not sure how clean the reflect() function is in swift right now as it stands.

reflect(User()) requires me to new up an instance of the object to reflect. This is a static(ish) language right? Why do I need to reflect a specific instance?

In c# you just go typeof(User).GetProperties|GetMethods|GetFields etc. You don't need to new up an object, all the required information is stored as metadata for the type after compilation.

I understand in a universe where you can dynamically add methods/fields/properties etc. to a type you'd want the specific instance at runtime to reflect, but as far as I know Swift does away with this dynamism on purpose.

Thanks looks interesting. I do suspect that it will stay playground only because for compiled code the data may not exist to work out the types of some values.