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Google May Adopt Apple's Swift Programming Language For Android, Says Report (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google has plans to make Apple's Swift object-oriented language a "first-class" language for Android, reports The Next Web. The publication, citing sources, adds that Google doesn't mean to replace the current first-class language for Android -- Java -- at least, "initially." Google sees an "upside" in using Swift, which Apple made open source last year. But a ton of things need to fall into place for this to work. From the report, "All told, Google would have to effectively recreate its efforts with Java -- for Swift. If the company is motivated enough, it's very possible to do so without compromising on its open source values or ruffling any developer feathers along the way." The company is also discussing internally about making Kotlin as a first-class language for Android. "Unlike Swift, Kotlin works with Android Studio, Google's IDE for Android development. Unfortunately, sources tell The Next Web that Google's current mindset is that Kotlin is a bit too slow when compiling."
Damn it Google, just pick a fucking language already and make it an option as an alternate to Javascript on the browser.
I thought the trick for web browsers was to pick your own favorite fucking language, and compile it to JavaScript for deployment? Then every programmer can use whatever language he/she prefers, rather than everybody having to use the same language.
Of course, this article isn't about web browsers, it's about application development.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I hope they don't intend to run Swift on their JVM.
What makes Swift so performant is that it lacks a tracing garbage collection. It only uses reference counting. Reference counting is a kind of garbage collection, but it doesn't by itself detect cycles. It's the cycle detection that is costly in languages like Java or Python (which uses reference counting along with a tracing collector for cycles.) People argue that cycle detection is cheap, especially in generational GCs. But the generational assumption presumes too much. Likewise when passing references between threads. Cross-generational (yet temporary) and cross-thread value passing can happen often. (See, e.g., MoarVMs problems.)
Plus, tracing collectors often need 2x RAM to be performant. Again, people wave away that requirement by arguing RAM is cheap and plentiful. But that assumption is broken all too often, as well, _especially_ on embedded devices.
So Swift offers both lower latency, more consistent latency, and requires fewer CPU and RAM resources. The cost is that you have manually break cycles, otherwise you'll leak memory. But tracing collectors don't fix all leaks, either. It's common to "leak" memory through caches. Some languages provide ephemerons (e.g. ephemeron tables in Lua), a special reference type that is more semantically powerful than, e.g., weak references, and provides the necessary hints to the tracing collector. But it's still something you must explicitly declare. And the Big-O complexity of ephemerons is pretty bad, so it can degrade performance significantly if there are lots of cycles passing through the ephemeron.
compile it to JavaScript for deployment
I have officially lived too long.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The browser developer tools actually support source "map" files that allow you to step through the source - it's already used in the case where you concatenate and minify multiple javascript files into one
perhaps there's a better term for this process?
Kludging
Webbing
Derping
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
On GNU/Linux, you can use whatever langage you want as long as it supports the C calling conventions, and most of them do. Same thing for oldschool Windows and pretty much every system running native code.
Why should a platform be tied to a particular language?