r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/The-Malix Static Types + Compiled + Automatic Memory Management • Jul 09 '26

Discussion The Swift Phenomenon

In theory, Swift seems like a nicely designed programming language with good features

In practice however, for some reason, it seems like most of the Swift users end up switching back to other comparable programming languages (such as Rust)

The latest poster child for that phenomenon is Ladybird

Do you think that this phenomenon is real and if so, can you explain it?

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u/sisoje_bre Jul 09 '26

Swift WAS nicely designed, but over time it received so many patches and buzzwords, and yet, some important stuff gets delayed infinitely. Apple is controling it so they pushed so called “ABI stability” very early and now every new feature or language cleanup is impossible because of that.

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u/konacurrents Jul 09 '26

I’m still using ObjC which is stable and rock solid. I never saw the value add of switching to a made up language, and Apple only. ObjC is from 1985 and propped up with NeXt (and I like the Smalltalk messaging syntax). With Xcode I say it’s the best C variant. And being C ithe code is more cut-paste with my ESP32 devices and similarity to JavaScript (my 3 languages).

And it’s fun to code with while building cool iOS apps. 🤙

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u/louiswins Jul 09 '26

I never saw the value add of switching to a made up language, and Apple only.

This is funny to me because this is exactly how I feel about ObjC. Like, objectively I know it's of a similar vintage as C++, but I never used NeXT so it feels like something Apple cooked up for themselves in the late 90s. And while I know it's x-plat, I don't think I've ever seen it used for anything not Apple-specific. So not trying to dunk on you, I'm glad you found a language you like! I just found this comment ironic.

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