[ardit33]

Unfortunately Swift is a dud.... and the Apple ecosystem is stuck with it for the next few decades....

I have said, Swift is to Objective-C, what Scala is to Java. Sure, there are plenty of people that like Scala, but its 'academic stuffiness and complexity' doomed it to a niche language.

Same with Swift. It is doomed to be an apple ecosystem only type of language.

All I wanted is a Python* look alike, with some solid static typing, what we got was a franken/monster/language where people felt to try out their little academic pet-peeves, and sucking out the fun out of programing with it, and making it less accessible to beginners.

GO is becoming popular, not because it is shoved down the throat to people, but because its own merit, and mainly because they kept it simple. It is a closely to a "static Python and some minimal features" we got....

*I think Python is a great language, and very accessible for beginners, just not suitable for large projects due to its dynamic type system

[cwbrandsma]

I write iOS apps for a living. Most the people I know have moved away from ObjectiveC. When I see language boards, and jobs for iOS, I see Swift asked for over ObjectiveC. On Reddit, Swift has more subscribers than ObjectiveC, most of the tech articules I see these days are ObjectiveC, when I watch a video on WWDC I often see Swift first.

Swift may not be what you wanted, but it is a long way from being a dud. Swift didn't have to be great, it just had to be better than ObjectiveC.

[sumanthvepa]

I'm not sure this argument makes sense. I'm not primarily a Swift developer. My goto languages are Python, C++, Java and Javascript (I build DevOps automation pipelines and monitoring tools -- primarily for scientific computing). But my experience with Swift on MacOs and iOS has been pleasant. I definitely would not use it for cross-platform development. But that is not because the language isn't nice. It's because it won't have widespread support outside the MacOS ecosystem. But for UI apps on MacOS and iOS, it is the best choice. Similarly, I use C# for Windows UI apps, but would not use it for anything else. Use the right tool for the job.

[coldtea]

>Unfortunately Swift is a dud....

Because of some technical argument, or just personal aesthetics?

>I have said, Swift is to Objective-C, what Scala is to Java. Sure, there are plenty of people that like Scala, but its 'academic stuffiness and complexity' doomed it to a niche language.

While Objective-C was really cool, it was neither modern enough, and few people liked it (mostly old NeXT/early OS X guys, but not most of the iOS crowds).

And Swift is easy to use and nothing like Scala in academic-ness and complexity.

>All I wanted is a Python look alike, with some solid static typing*

That's not what the ecosystem needed, or what people in general want (there's Go for that, for one). Swift is somewhere between Rust and Kotlin, features wise.

[ddragon]

Have you checked Nim? It's the closest thing to static Python that I know of (plus some extras like Lisp inspired macros), and there is some early development of a machine learning ecosystem (outside of wrappers):

https://nim-lang.org/

https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer