If your girlfriend wants a stable language for iOS development she should use Objective-C. Apple have been very clear about the fact that Swift is evolving and that there will be breaking changes.
Changes to Swift are hardly indecisive or pointless. A very clear rationale for removing the ++ operator was laid out here: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa....
While these changes may be painful now (though the removal of the ++ operator seems minor to me), they should result in a stronger and simpler language in the long run.
In Swift: Challenges and Opportunity for Language and Compiler Research [pdf]swiftlang
swift-evolution
Markdown2015–2026
swiftlang / swift-evolution
swift-evolution
This maintains proposals for changes and user-visible enhancements to the Swift Programming Language.
105Distinct people
154Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
15.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
This maintains proposals for changes and user-visible enhancements to the Swift Programming Language.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
I love Swift. Writing in it is awesome, the community is great, and it has traditionally been focused on a truly wonderful dev-focused experience. That being said, releases…
joshuawright11 used a recommendation phrase. 2 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 6:01:08 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year154 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-12-03 17:04:39 UTC to 2026-07-10 11:39:51 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 7 | 4 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 24 | 4 | 20 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 5 | 7 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 2 | 9 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 2 | 8 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 4 | 7 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 1 | 9 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 20 | 6 | 14 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 18 | 5 | 13 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 17 | 5 | 12 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Swift Evolution
https://www.swift.org/swift-evolution/
This repository tracks the ongoing evolution of the Swift programming language, standard library, and package manager.
Goals and Release Notes
Swift Language focus areas heading into 2025
CHANGELOG
Version
Announced
Released
Swift 6.4
2026-03-18
2026-09-15
Swift 6.3
2025-10-24
2026-03-24
Swift 6.2
2025-03-08
2025-09-15
Swift 6.1
2024-10-17
2025-03-31
Swift 6.0
2024-02-22
2024-09-17
Swift 5.10
2023-08-23
2024-03-05
Swift 5.9
2023-03-06
2023-09-18
Swift 5.8
2022-11-19
2023-03-30
Swift 5.7
2022-03-29
2022-09-12
Swift 5.6
2021-11-10
2022-03-14
Swift 5.5
2021-03-12
2021-09-20
Swift 5.4
2020-11-11
2021-04-26
Swift 5.3
2020-03-25
2020-09-16
Swift 5.2
2019-09-24
2020-03-24
Swift 5.1
2019-02-18
2019-09-20
Swift 5.0
2018-09-25
2019-03-25
Swift 4.2
2018-02-28
2018-09-17
Swift 4.1
2017-10-17
2018-03-29
Swift 4.0
2017-02-16
2017-09-19
Swift 3.1
2016-12-09
2017-03-27
Swift 3.0
2016-05-06
2016-09-13
Swift 2.2
2016-01-05
2016-03-21
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
24 sourcesHere are some reasons that Python removed them:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1485841/behaviour-of-incr...
Edit: a nice write up by Chris Lattner:
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
In Let’s Stop Bashing CI don't disagree on the benefits of RAII at all. I love it. It's a much cleaner and more general resource management idea than a tracing GC.
But incrementing/decrementing an atomic value in a tight loop apparently creates a performance problem that is severe enough for the Swift team to redesign their API. That wasn't decades ago:
"Code that handles indices has to perform atomic reference counting, which has significant overhead and can prevent the optimizer from making other improvements."
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
In IBM says Swift is ready for the enterpriseI really wish Swift releases were not pinned to Apple releases. Swift 3 introduced several regressions and instead of prioritizing some serious regressions, they focused on swift evolution proposals. For example, one accepted proposal renamed the common array _flatten_ method to _joined_ because it aligned one use case. Granted this is low hanging fruit, but a whole bunch of low hanging fruit takes time away from serious bugs and enhancements.
If Swift really wants to become successful, they need to work on bigger picture things like fixing breaking regressions, planning full reflection, built-in async instead of bikeshedding about array methods. I understand they want a non-breaking API from 3.0, but everyone isn't always going to be happy; and changing small functions for the vocal minority is not the correct path forward.
A list of 3.0
Read the rest
regressions: https://bugs.swift.org/browse/SR-2603?jql=labels%20%3D%203.0...
Flatten rename proposal: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
Wow, they've basically renamed the entire Standard Library, see the changeset: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
Not that I mind though. This kind of thing should be easy to auto refactor.
In Swift 3.0 ReleasedIn rapid changing environment, growth also implies learning. So perhaps we can also use learning as a new analogy of software development?
An ongoing example of learning and growing a design is "Swift Evolution Process"
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/process...
In A Generation Lost in the Bazaar (2012)> swift is for writing iOS/Mac apps
I think that's a little simplistic. It's true that it's early days for cross platform Swift but clear progress is being made:
1. https://swift.org/download/
2. https://github.com/SwiftAndroid
3. https://github.com/tinysun212/swift-windows
4. https://swiftforwindows.codeplex.com/
Better cross platform support is a goal of Swift 3.0:
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution
In Crystal: Fast as C, Slick as RubyBecause it is more complete in listing the changes, I'm not sure it fits the 'TL' part for you , but https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution has lists of
- Implemented proposals for Swift 3
- Accepted proposals which do not have a complete implementation
In What's New in Swift [video]There’s also a very nice overview of implemented proposals for Swift 3 on GitHub:
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution
The Swift evolution process is a very pleasant surprise for me.
In What's New in Swift [video]I like this one better from the actual proposal on GitHub [1]:
for view in sequence(first: someView, next: { $0.superview }) {
// someView, someView.superview, someView.superview.superview, ...
}
Seems rather handy.
[1]: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
In Swift: The joy of sequencesI wonder what the implications for Linux of the removal of "Portability" from the Swift 3 evolution/Readme.md [1] are?
[1] https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/commit/06b69a6e51a7...
In Winding down the Swift 3 releaseModernize libdispatch for Swift 3 naming conventions
1 points · Open discussionSwift Programming Language Evolution
175 points · Open discussionFrom https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution
" ... However, C++ itself is a very complex language, and providing good interoperability with C++ is a significant undertaking that is out of scope for Swift 3.0. "
In Implemented proposals for Swift 3Showing the 15 most recent of 24 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.