Swift 6.3

ttflee

> Swift 6.3 includes the first official release of the Swift SDK for Android.

0x3f

> Swift is designed to be the language you reach for at every layer of the software stack. It's a nice lang for sure, but this will never be true with the way things are. Such wasted opportunity by Apple.

sirwhinesalot

> Swift 6.3 introduces the @c attribute, which lets you expose Swift functions and enums to C code in your project. Annotating a function or enum with @c prompts Swift to include a corresponding declaration in the generated C header that you can include in your C/C++ files Why did this take so long to be added? Such strange priorities. Adding an entire C++ compiler for C++ interoperability before adding... C exports. Bizarre.

rzerowan

Whats the stdlib situation for swift in comparison to newish languages like go or rust. I know its not batteries included lke python - and doesnt have a massive dev ecosystem of helper libs seeming to be mostly tied to macOS/iOS operating system API/ABI.

dzonga

good to see incredible stuff being shipped in Swift. Haven't used it since v3 though. around 2015-17 - Swift could have easily dethroned Python. it was simple enough - very fast - could plug into the C/C++ ecosystem. Hence all the numeric stuff people were doing in Python powered by C++ libraries could've been done with Swift. the server ecosystem was starting to come to life, even supported by IBM. I think the letdown was on the Apple side - they didn't bring in the community fast enough whether on marketing, or messaging - unfortunately Swift has remained largely an Apple ecosystem thing - with complexity now chasing C++.

wwalexander

Re: module name selectors, wasn't this already possible, e.g. ModuleA.getValue()? Though I suppose this disambiguates if you also have a type called ModuleA.

troupo

> @c @specialized @inline(always) @export(implementation) Reminds me of "In case you forgot, Swift has 217 keywords now" https://x.com/jacobtechtavern/status/1841251621004538183

TekMol

Swift reminds me a lot of Flash back in the day. While the Flash guys had to use a native development environment and compile their stuff, I could just edit JavaScript in a plain text file and hit reload. 20 years later, and some of the same friends now swear by Swift. And have to use a native development environment and compile their stuff. While I still prefer to just edit JavaScript in a plain text file and hit reload.

drzaiusx11

No mention of compilation speed improvements? Very unfortunate. Compilation times slower than rust really hampers the devx of this otherwise decent language.

asimovDev

I remember building dylibs in Swift for use in C programs, had to use @cdecl annotation iirc to achieve that, which was experimental. Good to see it's finally official

rubymamis

I'm glad Chris Lattner moved on and founded Mojo. It's such a cool language with ton of potential.

dbvn

I want to like swift so bad

fithisux

Lack of Mingw support keeps me away from it, and Odin.

gloosx

>nocopy for disabling copy-to-clipboard Im curious how is this used?

jbverschoor

In an effort to use swift for scripting, without the startup cost: Swift Caching Compiler - https://github.com/jrz/tools

mathverse

Swift lives only for macOS,iOS and besides those ecosystems does not have a solid and robust ecosystem to be used for anything else. It's a shame but it for sure needs BigTech for it to be used anywhere else.

hirvi74

The Lord's language keeps getting better and better. The easier C interop could not have come at a more serendipitous time in my life.

lijunle

How is the toolchain? Does Swift Lint and Swift Format support the newest version. Honestly, the modern program language should have the built-in formatter and recommend lint rules. It is not just shipping a program language, it is a while ecosystem.

pkpowell

Anyone else think the weather in the screen shot at the top of the page is a bit off? Snow in Lisbon (apparently it snowed there once in 2006), rain in Reykjavik at -1°. AI slop?

slopinthebag

Swift truly is one of the languages of all time. I started a mobile app with the UI built in Swift and the core in Rust. The amount of implicit and hidden behaviour, magical fields being generated on objects because of certain annotations, the massive amount of @decorators...it's too much. I'm going to have an LLM generate the SwiftUI and touch as little of it as possible. It's also strange because before I learned Swift, I heard about how beautiful it is but I find it much noisier than Rust.