Ask HN: Swift, Scala, Rust, oh My! Which One?

1 point·sanosuke··4 comments

Most programming languages appeals to me. sometimes I feel like going crazy. Will you recommend to stick with Swift now that is open source, and that maybe IBM uses it to get rid of Oracle Java in the not so far future?

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Languages are tool to do things. So it all depends on what you want to achieve. For native iOS, MacOS apps, Swift is probably the best bet. For server code, there are many more good options. You can learn Swift and hope that it will have better support to write server code but if you need something now, learn something else.

They aren't really competitors to each other, so it depends much more on the type of applications you'd prefer to write. Swift is not a good choice for backend applications for obvious reasons, and nor would it be a good choice for writing desktop applications. Rust is not suitable for iOS, very appealing for desktop applications, less so for higher level server side code where the JVM seems to shine.

Scala would be the best bet on that front. There's no shortage of mobile developer jobs, so sure stick with Swift.

Its not about language as I've understood now going through the same phase you're going through right now.

What matters the most is getting things done, getting product to market.

Overthinking on language, platform is just a waste of time. Get things done, was good ? continue, not good? change but keep pushing the new features.

Yes, I strongly recommend invest in Swift front to back now so you stand ahead of curve. Apple seems very committed to pushing Swift to server side.

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