What Swift Tells Use About Programming Language Trends

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2 points·speednoise··5 comments

> Swift’s type system is best described as “way better than Java’s”, or perhaps “far more comprehensible than Scala’s”

I love Scala's type system, so I'm looking to seeing if Swift's really is better. Any type system is better than none at all - probably why most javascript-heavy apps become nightmares when they get to be > 1000 LOC.

"Any type system is better than none at all"

For tiny things, I profoundly disagree. A great type system is still (IMO) better than none at all, but there are plenty of type systems that get in the way more than they can be pressed into helping especially when things are tiny. When things are large, it's there are probably still some pathologically unhelpful type systems, but there's generally more leverage to be had...

For tiny things, sure. But tiny things tend to grow over time

Yes. But replacing the entirety of something tiny shouldn't be hard. One just has to do it, which involves 1) knowing to, and 2) following through.

Of course, best case is an awesome type system and libraries that suit your problem.

Having named parameters with different public than internal names is a brilliant idea, but I wonder how often it'll be used in practice. If it's used a lot, it might indicate that those parameters are badly named to begin with :)

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