6 ms·

It is a little out of date but a few years back I wrote up a few key differences: https://gist.github.com/GeorgeLyon/c7b07923f7a800674bc9745ae45ddc7f https://gi

It is a little out of date but a few years back I wrote up a few key differences: https://gist.github.com/GeorgeLyon/c7b07923f7a800674bc9745ae45ddc7f https://gist.github.com/GeorgeLyon/c7b07923f7a800674bc9745ae...

hardwaresofton 3y ago
Thanks for this list! > No macros / build-time code generation While I do appreciate macros, and use them sparingly I find the best case for them is doing things like generating to/from <protocol> (e.g. JSON) implementations. In Haskell, there's a fully baked system for derivation where you can set up implementations that walk the type trees, but most other languages don't have that -- I find macros to be a great slightly lower complexity way to do this kind of thing. What is Swift's answer in production? Does everyone just write extensions for their types? Rust's serde is a joy to use and 99% of the time "just works", despite the macro magic. > Type system function resolution I'm not sure this is a real problem for me or most people, but taken with the point about polymorphism (I guess this point is basically about late binding), I see the benefit here. > Protocols vs Traits as implemented Generic methods being allowed in Swift is quite nice. > Sugar Great points in there -- some of them are style/preference but I can definitely see benefits to a bunch of them. The string interpolation point you might want to update (Rust does that now!) Named arguments are also quite amazing. Again, fantastic list -- saved! I've been meaning to give Swift a proper try lately and this is a great reference.
- georgelyon 3y ago
  For the record "No macros", is one of the things that is out-of-date. There is some discussion about it in the comments... maybe I'll be forced to actually update it :)
  - hardwaresofton 3y ago
    After having written a few of them at this point at $DAYJOB and on my own... They're actually not so bad at all -- it's quite nice the world that they open up. I'd venture to say most people are mostly annoyed at the overuse of macros (where a simple function would do). Rust's attribute system is something it REALLY got right -- stuff like #[cfg(test)] and the conditional compilation stuff is really really impressive. Not sure what cross platform dev looks like in Swift but the bar is quite high in Rust land.

hardwaresofton 3y ago

Thanks for this list! > No macros / build-time code generation While I do appreciate macros, and use them sparingly I find the best case for them is doing things like generating to/from <protocol> (e.g. JSON) implementations. In Haskell, there's a fully baked system for derivation where you can set up implementations that walk the type trees, but most other languages don't have that -- I find macros to be a great slightly lower complexity way to do this kind of thing. What is Swift's answer in production? Does everyone just write extensions for their types? Rust's serde is a joy to use and 99% of the time "just works", despite the macro magic. > Type system function resolution I'm not sure this is a real problem for me or most people, but taken with the point about polymorphism (I guess this point is basically about late binding), I see the benefit here. > Protocols vs Traits as implemented Generic methods being allowed in Swift is quite nice. > Sugar Great points in there -- some of them are style/preference but I can definitely see benefits to a bunch of them. The string interpolation point you might want to update (Rust does that now!) Named arguments are also quite amazing. Again, fantastic list -- saved! I've been meaning to give Swift a proper try lately and this is a great reference.

georgelyon 3y ago
For the record "No macros", is one of the things that is out-of-date. There is some discussion about it in the comments... maybe I'll be forced to actually update it :)
- hardwaresofton 3y ago
  After having written a few of them at this point at $DAYJOB and on my own... They're actually not so bad at all -- it's quite nice the world that they open up. I'd venture to say most people are mostly annoyed at the overuse of macros (where a simple function would do). Rust's attribute system is something it REALLY got right -- stuff like #[cfg(test)] and the conditional compilation stuff is really really impressive. Not sure what cross platform dev looks like in Swift but the bar is quite high in Rust land.