this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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Welp, I haven't seen anyone learn Swift other than for Apple stuff these days. So I wonder how many can actually contribute to the code. It's also made by Apple, so yeah. It would have been more performant and secure (both of which are pretty important in a browser) if it was written in a more low level language. For example Rust.
It is currently written in C++. They are looking to switch to Swift.
They looked into Rust but decided that GUI work was a pain and that they wanted something more object-oriented.
It's also open-source? Like, Microsoft created C# and Typescript. Google created Go. Those get used without people bringing up their origins. Hell, ~~Rust~~ Javascript* was created by a homophobe. What, do you think the license lets Apple close-source everyone's code if they choose or something?
Sorry, I'm just really tired of these low-effort comments. The only thing that should matter is the language and if it hits the goals the project needs.
javascript, too
Sorry, I was thinking of Javascript. Rust was a different Mozilla employee.
makes sense, though. javascript is a very bad language :shrug:
May I recommend editing your comment?
Honestly, I really should have already, but spaced on it. Thank you for reminding me.
Sure. It is open source, but the development is done by Apple engineers. I also would like to state that Go has trackers in it. I also don't really care what the creator of a language is. Homophobe, sexist, racist or other similar stuff, I couldn't care less as long as the language is good.
You couldn't care, as long as the language is good, but you care when it's Apple?
You're wrong btw. Sure, Apple engineers developed it originally. But it is now in the hands of the open source community, with over 1,000 contributors on github: https://github.com/swiftlang/swift
Edit: To be clear, unlike something like Chromium, Apple doesn't even own the repositories anymore. It's fully independent.
I said:
Why wouldn't I care if the language is bad in my opinion?
Okay, so what's bad about Swift?
While Rust would probably have been a good choice for implementing a new browser, I don't think Swift deserves the criticism it's getting in this thread:
“More performant” citation needed. Very well written Rust might be extremely fast, yes, but Rust is also a hard language to get right. Swift is far from a slow language and I would not be surprised if the average rust programmer barely if at all manages to beat out the average swift programmer in terms of speed. As for the amount of programmers interested, hard to tell, but given the sheer amount of Swift devs I’d not be surprised if there were quite a few interested ones and I am unconvinced Rust programmers are statistically more likely to be interested in Browser development.
Citation granted.
lol
Benchmarks mean nothing. These aren’t the results of code written by an average programmer. Edit: and as a general note I would also like to point out the relative inconsistency of the results in terms of factor, only further reinforcing my point. I like Rust and all but we do need to admit it doesn’t magically solve all our problems.
You're free to suggest another method of comparing the two languages' performance. This is the best we're have, and Rust wins in every single benchmark shown there.
Citation needed.
I never said it did. I simply pointed out that it's demonstrably faster than Swift.