> Swift isn't intended to be a systems language: it's an application language.
It may not be ready as a systems language in its pre-1.0 form, but the Swift book claims that it's "designed to scale gracefully from ‘Hello World’ to an entire operating system", so Apple appears to have big goals.
I'm thinking about starting the "Rust contributor points out how Rust is a systems language and $language is an applications language" drinking game. At least now they'll focus on Swift instead of Go. I don't mean this to be rude; I've just noticed a similar set of usernames in threads about certain !Rust languages playing the underdog position and always feeling like they need to compare.
Given Rust's PR, speaking of that -- not a thread about Go passes without at least three pcwalton comments these days -- I actually broke down and gave it a try. I wrote a little Hello World server and then got lambasted by a friend of mine for not working functionally, since, in his words, "Rust is a functional language and the fact that it supports other paradigms is a mistake." I rm -rf'd and ignore it for now, but I look forward to it stabilizing and maybe coming back to it.
Rust has potential but the PR needs to ease up just a little. There is room for more than one language in the world.
> not a thread about Go passes without at least three pcwalton comments these days
Well, every thread about Go inevitably has numerous comments comparing it to Rust, often erroneously, and pcwalton is one of the primary Rust developers.
I think you should look up what "indignant" means, then, for the benefit of all of us, demonstrate the anger in my comment that was not put there unconsciously by the reader.
It may not be ready as a systems language in its pre-1.0 form, but the Swift book claims that it's "designed to scale gracefully from ‘Hello World’ to an entire operating system", so Apple appears to have big goals.