[jolux]

>I don't think Swift stands to gain wide spread traction outside of Apple orientated app development.

It already is though, there are several Linux web frameworks etc. It's open source and community run so I'm not sure how they're planning to box out competitors from it.

[devsquid]

There are some web frameworks that are indevelopment. That does not mean Swift has gained any traction. Also having toyed around with one, the experience was not great.

When writing a server, I would take Go over Swift anyday. It out preforms it, uses less memory, its simpiler, oh and it uses a "tradiontal" GC.

[fauigerzigerk]

>uses less memory

That is very much _not_ the case according to the testing I have done recently.

Swift uses a lot less memory than Go unless the program uses only trivial amounts of memory in the first place. Using interfaces in Go data structures makes the difference even more pronounced.

On top of that, all runtimes that use a tracing GC require tons of spare memory at all times unless programs are very carefully written to avoid memory allocation.

That said, Swift has a few very weak spots when it comes to memory. Most notably the String type, which is terrible on all counts, but that is a whole different story.

[pjmlp]

> On top of that, all runtimes that use a tracing GC require tons of spare memory at all times unless programs are very carefully written to avoid memory allocation.

Only if the said language doesn't allow for stack or static globals.

Quite a few languages do allow it.

[fauigerzigerk]

Doesn't that effectively amount to manual memory management? What particular languages are you referring to?

[pjmlp]

> Doesn't that effectively amount to manual memory management?

Not really, example in Active Oberon:

    TYPE
      point = RECORD x, y : INTEGER; END;

    VAR
      staticPoint : point; (* On the stack or global *)
      gcPoint     : POINTER TO point; (* GC pointer *)
      noGCPoint   : POINTER(UNTRACED) TO point; (* pointer not traced by the GC *)

> What particular languages are you referring to?

Mesa/Cedar, Oberon, Oberon-2, Active Oberon, Component Pascal, Modula-2+, Modula-3, D, Oberon-07, Eiffel, BETA.

There are probably a few other ones.

[fauigerzigerk]

>noGCPoint : POINTER(UNTRACED) TO point;

That's fine for one point. How about N points where N varies at runtime?

If I allocate memory dynamically outside the GC's remit, I'm going to have to release that memory somehow.

[geodel]

It will be great if you have any benchmark to share. From what s available on internet Swift does seem to use more memory than Go.

[fauigerzigerk]

What sources have you found on the internet?

My own code is unfortunately a bit messy and entangled with unrelated stuff. If I find the time I'm going to clean it up.