> I’ve been writing in Swift since the day it was announced
May I ask how you consider these to be compatible?
It was a calculated risk. Since the company I was working for, at the time, was never going to use Swift, my "bread and butter" was at no risk, whatsoever. We were a C++ shop. I just started working with it on nights and weekends.
Being a C++ shop, however, we were quite familiar with Lattner and LLVM, so we were aware of his propensity for WIN. That gave me some confidence, going forward. Also, Apple didn't just announce a language. They also announced a full system API, as well as a product roadmap. The API showed they were serious about it. Those don't come in Cracker Jack boxes. They take some serious work and investment.
It was definitely a risk, but I'm a conservative, scarred veteran of many errors in judgment (can you say "OpenDoc"? I knew you could!). I wasn't about to run into a burning dumpster, half-assed, and I thought it was worth it. I knew it would take four or five years to mature, and it has. I tend to play the long game. I learned that, from all those years, working with the Japanese.
I'm rereading your previous comment multiple times but unfortunately still failing to see what you're referring to. The only explanation I can see is "we were quite familiar with Lattner and LLVM, so we were quite aware of his propensity for WIN. That gave me some confidence, going forward."
> They also announced a full system API, as well as a product roadmap.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "a full system API", and does Apple ever announce a product roadmap? I would definitely be interested in this roadmap of which you speak. :-)
I apologize.
They have had a Swift roadmap forever. I think it's now kept on swift.org. I'll see if I can find it. I think it's a fairly sparse one. I really only cared about the evolution through ABI Stable. All I needed to hear, was that was a goal.
You are right. They tend to eschew roadmaps, but they did a "hard-sell" with Swift. They knew it would be difficult to build momentum with.
"Full System API" is the native frameworks; UIKit, AppKit, WatchKit, etc., as well as things like WebKit and MapKit.
When Swift was announced, they had APIs for most of that stuff. I was pleasantly surprised. I had a full app, working within a day or so (using beta Xcode, of course).
