[coldtea]

>For that to happen Swift needs to be usable at Java level in all OSes where JVM/JDKs (some of them with AOT support since the early days of Java) do exist.

No, you seem to confuse "replace Java" with "TOTALLY AND ABSOLUTELY replace Java everywhere".

Swift just needs to be usable on the platforms that matter -- and since it's by default on OS X, that leaves Windows and Linux.

Nobody cares if it runs on some mainframe architecture that 0.001 of Java use happens, or some other obscure environment.

[pjmlp]

Apparently you have forgotten about Android, smart cards, blue ray players, embedded devices controlling your electric and heating bill, car infotainment systems, IoT gateways, Cisco phones, Ricoh and Xerox laser printers, ....

Also as of 2017 Swift is still quite unusable on Linux beyond a few demo apps and on Windows nowhere to be seen.

Additionally GNU/Linux, BSD and Windows are better served by Rust, SML, OCaml, Haskell and F# than Swift.

In all aspects that matter, they have better compilers to chose from, IDE support, libraries and tooling.

The positive aspect of Swift is being a modern multi-paradigm language being pushed by a company like Apple, which will hopefully improve the adoption of such languages.

However outside Apple's own operating systems, Swift has a very long road to travel before it gets any kind of meaningful adoption, let alone being a threat to programming languages on GNU/Linux, BSD and Windows.

[coldtea]

>Apparently you have forgotten about Android, smart cards, blue ray players, embedded devices controlling your electric and heating bill, car infotainment systems, IoT gateways, Cisco phones, Ricoh and Xerox laser printers, ....

I haven't forgotten them, but apart from Android, I simply don't care for them as domains where Swift should dominate to call it a Java replacement. Nobody cares what runs in a set top box or smart card reader, and blue ray players wont be a thing very soon (if they ever were).

Heck, even Android is moving to Kotlin (and it's Davlik no JVM, so it's twice removed from Java now) and don't they also do a new framework for Android programming with Dart? And Fucsia, when that comes out, I don't see it featuring Java either.

I don't think Lattner had those things in mind when he mentioned competing with Java either. Nor did he had in mind some future in which Java has 0% market share and Swift has all of Java's share in every domain. (Plus, he mentioned the server side and service development as targets Swift is interested in specifically).

>Additionally GNU/Linux, BSD and Windows are better served by Rust, SML, OCaml, Haskell and F# than Swift

That would be relevant if somebody had said that Swift is to replace them today. But what was said was an intention. Not a description of the current situation.

(And let's be real: I don't think Ocaml, SML and Haskell will ever go that far at the stakes Swift is interested in. They are excellent languages but either too esoteric, or with too small communities that don't show much signs of getting any bigger. Languages with corporate backers, on the other hand, usually fair much better -- so Rust still plays, even if Mozilla is not a major player, because it also chose a much needed niche).

[pjmlp]

> Heck, even Android is moving to Kotlin (and it's Davlik no JVM, so it's twice removed from Java now) and don't they also do a new framework for Android programming with Dart? And Fucsia, when that comes out, I don't see it featuring Java either.

Apparently forgetting again that without Java and the JVM there isn't Android studio and 100% of all major Android libraries are written in Java.

Java will never go away from Android, just like C will never go away from any UNIX-like OS.

Praising Kotlin while bashing Java, is like thinking any UNIX derived OS will ever use anything other than C for its system level programming, or that JavaScript will ever stop being the king of the browser in spite of WebAssembly.

The framework you mention is Flutter and the Android team doesn't have anything to do with it. It is being developed by the Dart team while searching for whatever might become the language's killer feature to be adopted outside AdWords team and Google walls.

Java might eventually lose to other programming languages, hence the active work regarding improvements on AOT compilation, value types and GPGPU programming.

But the language taking Java's place surely won't be Swift.