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Author Topic: The Swift Progamming Language...  (Read 7554 times)

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Offline persia

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #14 on: June 04, 2014, 01:42:29 AM »
From a quick perusal of the ebook the language reminds me of Pascal. But I'm not going to hold that against it.  I want to take it for a spin, when will it be available?
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Offline commodorejohn

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #15 on: June 04, 2014, 01:43:57 AM »
The problem with Java is that it's a solid language saddled with a horrible library and runtime. They should've gone back to the drawing board when they first realized that they'd made "integer" both a primitive and an object type.
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Offline Duce

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #16 on: June 04, 2014, 02:33:16 AM »
Looking into Swift briefly, looks to be similar to Go (aka Golang), actually.  Conceptually, anyways.
 

Offline Thorham

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #17 on: June 04, 2014, 02:49:53 AM »
I'll stick to 680x0 assembly language. All this modern hocus pocus.
 

Offline bloodlineTopic starter

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #18 on: June 04, 2014, 07:45:00 AM »
Quote from: persia;765662
From a quick perusal of the ebook the language reminds me of Pascal. But I'm not going to hold that against it.  I want to take it for a spin, when will it be available?


If you have a developer licence you can try it now.

If you don't hold its Pascal like syntax against it, you haven't used Pascal ;-)

Offline Bif

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #19 on: June 04, 2014, 08:10:00 AM »
I have not looked at Swift at all. Or Objective C. I have done some work in C#. The biggest problem I have with these "next big thing" languages and the reason I won't even bother looking at them now is they don't seem to end up being ubiquitous. Swift/Objective-C in reality never seems to be used for anything but Apple platforms, because Apple is pushing it, and nobody else really. C# is used for Microsoft platforms, because Microsoft pushes it, and nobody else really. With their vested interests nobody then seems to be able to agree on a common language going forward that would be available to develop on for any device.

For the dozens of devices I've programmed for over the years, one thing I could count on is C being supported. Likewise, C++ for any platform actively supported in the last 15 years. I wouldn't want to code an app in C# for an MS platform then rewrite it in Swift for an Apple platform, then C++ for some other platform. Why not just use C++ from the start to save the porting headaches/cost? I guess I've lived in an extremely cross-platform development world for decades so to use anything else would feel idiotic. So at this point I have a feeling I'll be coding in pretty much nothing but C/C++ until I'm dead.

Java seems to have been the biggest attempt to get a "modern" language/development available in all sorts of places. But the language is too high level, and there's the whole run-time thing. I don't think I'll be using Java on an SPU any time soon. Which is a big problem I have with all these new languages, they tend to go too high level and leave the low level stuff behind, making it very hard to do. Mmmm managed code, fun!

I'm not even against a new language if it can keep easy access to the low level flexibility of C/C++, but add some new constructs to make higher level things easier, because some of those higher level things in C++ are indeed confusing and dangerous and take a lot of use to master. But any new language should probably be developed and managed by a wider standards/interests committee with many parties, not just one vendor's whims unleashed upon the world - that never seems to be looked upon well by the other parties, even if the language may be the greatest thing ever you may see little buy-in because the other parties didn't feel part of the development process.
 

Offline bloodlineTopic starter

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #20 on: June 04, 2014, 10:26:17 AM »
Now I've had a day or so to ruminate on the subject, I accept that swift offers advantages for application development.

But the biggest turn off is the lack of control I'm used to with Obj-c. I have a clear mental picture of what is happening on my CPU and how my memory structures are arranged. That's a feature of C and its derivatives. With Swift, one is kept away from the hardware. That was the intention and concept behind languages like obj-c in the first place...

I will probably learn to live with it :-(

Offline Duce

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #21 on: June 04, 2014, 11:07:15 AM »
Quote from: bloodline;765680
I will probably learn to live with it :-(


For the most part, you really won't have a choice.
 

Offline bloodlineTopic starter

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #22 on: June 04, 2014, 11:28:55 AM »
Quote from: Duce;765682
For the most part, you really won't have a choice.
I do have that fear, but since the runtime is still NeXTStep Obj-C isn't going anywhere soon... And by the time they do decide to cull it, I doubt I'll ether (be alive/ be developing apple apps/care) delete as appropriate :)

Offline Linde

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #23 on: June 04, 2014, 11:43:28 PM »
Quote from: RedskullDC;765625

1. Type Safety vs. Type Inference

I don't think you can have it both ways.
Inference makes it easier on the programmer, but also allows subtle bugs to creep in.
Did some work recently in RUBY where this became an issue.

Or maybe I have just spent too long programming in VHDL :)


I think that you are getting some concepts mixed up. Type inference won't necessarily cause subtle bugs. In Swift (like Go and I guess C#) the types are inferred at compile time, and if there is a type error (e.g. assigning a floating point number to a variable that was inferred to be an integer), the compiler will bail out to tell you. I believe that the problem you are thinking of relates to dynamically typed languages, where the type isn't necessarily known at runtime, such as ruby or python.

Quote from: bloodline;765660
Python feels dated... Compared to C... For me, everything feels dated compared to C (and C derived languages, including Jave).


I'm not sure what definition of "dated" you assume here, but it obviously isn't the literal meaning of the word. What exactly make these languages feel dated compared to C? Do they remind you of any pre-C programming languages in particular? IMO Python has plenty of drawbacks that you can validly criticize, but I don't think this is one.
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #24 on: June 05, 2014, 12:44:55 AM »
Python feels dated because it's such a throwback - an interpreted, dynamically-typed language where whitespace counts as part of the syntax? A language where each version is subtly incompatible, so you may wind up needing several different installs of the runtime on the same computer? It's like a little piece of the '80s and their semi-infinite number of bizarre one-off language variants for one particular brand of home computer somehow bubbled up into the present and accreted elements from newer trends.

It also feels dated because it's taken up Visual Basic's mantle as "the quick-and-easy programming language everybody uses to hack up small utility programs so you inevitably have to go to an entirely different website and download another program in order to run the program you just downloaded" - at least where .NET hasn't filled that role. (I'll say one thing for Python, at least its runtime isn't in the hundreds of megabytes.)
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Offline bloodlineTopic starter

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #25 on: June 05, 2014, 07:51:54 AM »

Offline Linde

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #26 on: June 05, 2014, 01:21:08 PM »
Quote from: commodorejohn;765710
Python feels dated because it's such a throwback - an interpreted, dynamically-typed language where whitespace counts as part of the syntax?

All valid concerns, but I'm not sure how they contribute to your argument that it feels "dated". These perks have their pros and cons, and while the concepts aren't all exactly new, there is nothing fundamentally archaic about any of them. Since we're comparing to C, why not talk about digraphs and trigraphs?

Quote from: commodorejohn;765710
A language where each version is subtly incompatible, so you may wind up needing several different installs of the runtime on the same computer?

Each version? Nope. Compatibility differences potentially exist between minor and major version numbers, but they are all well documented and far from subtle. If anything, I'll argue that the fact that the language is being actively maintained speaks for its "non-datedness", at least in the literal sense of the word. Not to say that the whole deal with python 2/3 isn't an awful mess, but again, it doesn't really contribute to your argument that it feels dated, unless you subscribe to some esoteric idea of what feels dated that doesn't have anything to do with contemporary ideas and expectations or continuity.

Quote from: commodorejohn;765710
It's like a little piece of the '80s and their semi-infinite number of bizarre one-off language variants for one particular brand of home computer somehow bubbled up into the present and accreted elements from newer trends.

I think you'll have to be more specific. You aren't really saying anything substantial about Python or any of the anonymous 80's home computer language variants you are presumably comparing it to.

Quote from: commodorejohn;765710
It also feels dated because it's taken up Visual Basic's mantle as "the quick-and-easy programming language everybody uses to hack up small utility programs so you inevitably have to go to an entirely different website and download another program in order to run the program you just downloaded" - at least where .NET hasn't filled that role.

You are not making a valid point about the language itself. Your criticism is first of all based on the presumption that software is written for its users to be downloaded. From that limited perspective, I may agree with you  (although I haven't been using operating systems that didn't come bundled with python 2.7.x for the past few years), but even then I question it as an argument against Python as a language, and most of all, for Python as a "dated" language.
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #27 on: June 05, 2014, 02:21:56 PM »
Chill, dude. I never said that Python was objectively terrible. I've used it myself, and while it's not my language of choice, I can see why people like it. I said it feels dated, which it does, because there's so many things about it that remind of the weird old days. '80s synth-driven pop-rock feels dated, too, and I don't dislike that either.
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Offline nicholas

Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #28 on: June 05, 2014, 02:24:32 PM »
The Swift syntax is bloody awful. They could have at least kept semi-colons to make it more familiar to C/Obj-C programmers.

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Re: The Swift Progamming Language...
« Reply #29 from previous page: June 05, 2014, 03:14:38 PM »
Swift Playgroud reminds me of Easy AMOS & AMOS Pro.
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