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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

> I'm hoping the technology will advance enough so that we eventually get one language that can navigate both side of the spectrum.

Me too! I'd love a language at the JavaScript/Python/PHP/Perl level, but in a Swift/Rust style. Possibly with some kind of gradual typing. TypeScript is pretty close to this, but alas its type system isn't sound. And it has to deal with the legacy of JS semantics (like exceptions).

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Perhaps Raku (https://raku.org) could hit your sweet spot?

I think Swift more or less hits this sweet spot for me. As mentioned Kotlin is also very close but comes with some baggage. Crystal and Nim are on the horizon and are promising this kind of combination of ergonomics, correctness and performance.

Swift has a long road ahead for the very "low" end, i.e. replacing C or even C++. It's missing, or has extremely awkward versions (`UnsafeOMGPointer`) of various pieces right now, [and some may never even be added][0].

[0]:https://forums.swift.org/t/bit-fields-like-in-c/34651/7

Yeah that makes sense, I guess in my mind I don't see it as a C or C++ replacement as with Rust. To me it fits as a slightly higher level, safe, general purpose language with pretty good performance for most tasks you throw at it. After working with it for a year I feel very productive and that I can trust my code will work if it compiles. A similar feeling to Elm or maybe Rust but yet to spend a longer time with Rust.

Yeah, fair, and I agree with your take; there's just this longstanding idea/goal that Swift can (or will be able to) do it all.

Have you tried Kotlin?

Sounds like you'd like Haxe.

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