Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jb1991 1657 days ago
Swift is quite fast as an app programming language. I’ve never understood why anyone could consider it a systems programming language with a straight face. But to say that it has a “real performance problem” is a bit of an exaggeration. Compared to the many other languages out there, it’s faster than most.
1 comments
syspec 1657 days ago
Probably because that is one of the states goals as voiced by the languages creator
link
jb1991 1656 days ago
That was a long time ago, I thought. The word "systems" was removed from the swift website years ago when it was clear that it did not really have that priority.
link
syspec 1655 days ago
> The goal of the Swift project is to create the best available language for uses ranging from systems programming, to mobile and desktop apps, scaling up to cloud services.

> Fast. Swift is intended as a replacement for C-based languages (C, C++, and Objective-C). As such, Swift must be comparable to those languages in performance for most tasks. Performance must also be predictable and consistent, not just fast in short bursts that require clean-up later. There are lots of languages with novel features — being fast is rare.

Those are literally the stated goals. It does not get more clear than saying "Swift is intended to be a replacement for C-based languages (C, C++)..."

[0]https://www.swift.org/about/

link