[pcr910303]

I don't think that adopting a syntax that looks similar to Smalltalk means it has 'adopted Smalltalk syntax'. I like Smalltalk as a language, I do think that Swift would have been better if it's runtime model was more similar to Objective-C and Smalltalk, but it's not fair to say Swift 'added Smalltalk syntax to address a special case'.

I do agree in general that Swift can benefit from a reduction of special cases, but my personal feeling is that Swift is getting more consistent every version (at least in the features that already existed). YMMV, of course.

[mpweiher]

> I don't think that adopting a syntax that looks similar to Smalltalk means it has 'adopted Smalltalk syntax'.

How so? That is literally what they did. The trailing closure syntax is Smalltalk keyword syntax, and so Smalltalk keyword syntax is used for that one special case. Which exists in addition to the non-keyword trailing closure syntax and the non-trailing (regular argument) closure syntax.

> but it's not fair to say Swift 'added Smalltalk syntax to address a special case'.

Can you explain how it is "unfair" when that is exactly what happened? Smalltalk syntax is really compact, there just isn't that much there.

[pcr910303]

Well, the syntax is same - the ideas are different. Trailing closure syntax is basically 'you can remove the parens if there are trailing closures'. Which, if you apply that to multiple closures, you get the syntax that also looks like Smalltalk. Which is understandable, since Swift keyword calling syntax was always 'keyword followed with a colon' since Swift 1, which was inspired by Objective-C, which was inspired by Smalltalk. But then that's not adding Smalltalk syntax in a later stage, it was baked into the language since day 1. That multiple trailing closure syntax - that syntax can come out from anyone knowing Swift without any Smalltalk knowledge, it's a logical next step. So it feels a bit weird to call it 'adopting Smalltalk syntax' since I don't think Smalltalk influenced that syntax any more than other parts of the language.

[mpweiher]

> Well, the syntax is same

Exactly. Which is why I wrote "they adopted the syntax", not "they adopted the ideas". It would have been really wonderful had they adopted the ideas, and it would also have made their marketing slogan "Objective-C without the C" actually truthful.

> the ideas are different

Yes, and that's the problem.

> Trailing closure syntax is basically 'you can remove the parens if there are trailing closures'

Not really, no. The parens are still all there, you just move one (original trailing closure syntax) or more (new keyword trailing closure syntax) of the parameters outside the parens.

Which is horribly inconsistent just by itself. I mean, the point of the parens is that they delimit the arguments. If you have parens, then the arguments go inside the parens. Except for this one...did I say one, I meant these two special cases where the arguments do not go inside the parens.

If you are going to have some of the arguments be outside the parens, why not just go all in and have all of them "outside" by just getting rid of the parens and be (a) consistent and (b) dramatically simpler and (c) readable?

> which was inspired by Objective-C, which was inspired by Smalltalk.

> I don't think Smalltalk influenced that syntax any more ...

Which is it?

Anyway, the point of the article wasn't that they consciously decided to adopt Smalltalk syntax. The point is that they bungled this so badly that they ended up adopting the very Smalltalk syntax that they initially rejected, and the reason they ended up adopting it was that they couldn't make things work reasonably any other way. Except that had they done this from the beginning, they would have not run into any of these problems.