All the places Swift will go (Changelog Interviews #566)
Nov 16, 2023
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Ben Cohen, the Swift Team Manager at Apple, talks about the world of Swift, including Apple Native apps, Swift Server Workgroup, Swift extension for VS Code, Swift as a safe C/C++ successor language, Swift on Linux and Windows, and The Browser Company's Arc browser bringing Arc to Windows.
Swift offers a high-level, safe, and performant environment for developing iOS and macOS native apps, server-side applications, and VS Code extensions.
Statsig provides a unified platform for feature flags, experimentation, and analytics to help companies ship new features faster and smarter.
Swift's ecosystem has expanded beyond iOS and macOS development, with official support for Windows and Linux platforms and seamless integration with legacy languages like Objective-C and C++.
Deep dives
Swift as a versatile programming language
Swift is a versatile programming language used by the Swift team at Apple for iOS and macOS native apps, server-side applications, and even Swift extensions for VS Code. It offers a high-level, safe, and performant environment for developers. With Swift, developers can write code that is both memory safe and easy to read, reducing the risk of correctness bugs. Swift's interoperability with legacy languages like Objective-C and C++ allows for a smooth transition and integration with existing code bases.
Statsig: Building a unified platform for feature flags and experimentations
Statsig is a unified platform for feature flags, experimentation, and analytics that helps companies ship new features faster and smarter. Its CEO and founder, VG Raji, was inspired by the engineering culture at Facebook and created Statsig to bring the same level of tools and data-informed decision-making to every company. By using Statsig, engineers can easily build, roll out, and track the impact of new features, ensuring that they meet customers' expectations and improve product quality.
The value of adopting Swift in software development
Swift offers several advantages for software development, including a higher level of productivity, memory safety, and performance. It combines the best of both worlds by providing a language that is as performant as C++ but feels higher-level and more enjoyable to use, similar to Ruby. Swift's support for concurrency and its upcoming data race safety feature make it well-suited for modern application development, where correctness and performance are crucial.
Swift's platform expansion and interoperability
Swift's ecosystem has expanded beyond its origins as a language for iOS and macOS development. It is now officially supported on Windows and Linux platforms as well, thanks to community-driven efforts. Swift's interoperability with legacy languages like Objective-C and C++ allows developers to seamlessly integrate Swift code with existing code bases and access platform-specific APIs. The openness of Swift's open-source nature also enables developers to bring Swift to new platforms and environments.
Swift's potential in the gaming industry
Swift is being proposed as an alternative language for game development, particularly in the gdow engine framework. This proposal focuses on Swift's memory safety and performance advantages over garbage-collected languages like C#. By leveraging Swift's interoperability with C++, developers can gradually introduce Swift into various parts of the gdow project, benefiting from Swift's modern language features and potential enhancements to the gaming workflow.
This week we’re talking about Swift with Ben Cohen, the Swift Team Manager at Apple. We caught up with Ben while at KubeCon last week. Ben takes us into the world of Swift, from Apple Native apps on iOS and macOS, to the Swift Server Workgroup for developing and deploying server side applications, to the Swift extension for VS Code, Swift as a safe C/C++ successor language, Swift on Linux and Windows, and of course what The Browser Company’s Arc browser is doing to bring Arc to Windows.
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