Equatable and Hashable also have some "magic", currently only for enums without associated values. Recently this was generalized to enums where all associated values are themselves Equatable and Hashable, as well as structs where all fields are Equatable and Hashable. This is not implemented in Swift 4, but an implementation was recently added to the master branch. You can read the details here: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
In Swift 4.0 Releasedswiftlang
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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Also in these discussions
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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
12 sourcesThey implemented what looks like the Rust ownership model: SE-0176 Enforce Exclusive Access to Memory (https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...), but I'm having a hard time understanding the proposal, can anyone shed some light on this?
In Swift 4.0 ReleasedSwift: Removing currying func declaration syntax
1 points · Open discussionHere's an interesting post about the challenges of currying syntax in new languages:
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
In Currying vs. Partial Application (2015)This project's still on Swift 3, so I don't have first-hand experience upgrading to Swift 4. It looks like there are breaking changes though, albeit not nearly as many as 3 had.
The most notable one looks like in the String API [1]. There are a few other minor ones that most projects won't hit, like in the dictionary/set API [2]. A few of these are also slightly more breaking than it initially seems because they've added temporary compatibility workarounds marked as deprecated in Swift 4 to avoid breaking as much working Swift 3 code, but these will go away for Swift 5, so you do still have to port anyway (just not immediately).
[1] https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
[2] https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
In Swift 5: start your enginesSwift 5 – Swift Programming Language Evolution
4 points · Open discussionWatch the video about the talk, what is new in Swift 4.0 at WWDC 2017.
Basically 4.0 will introduce the notion of exclusive access, with more affine type ideas to follow up on 4.x.
EDIT: This feature is described by SE-0176.
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
In Rust as a gateway drug to Haskell> the removal of traditional for loops […] When I saw it, my reaction was ... WHY???
For all of these reasons, at least: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...
In Swift's EvolutionSmart KeyPaths: Better Key-Value Coding for Swift
2 points · Open discussionThis is already being done.
Swift 4 (unreleased) has source compatibility with Swift 3 [0], so all Swift code working today should work in the next version, no migrator necessary.
Additionally, the goal of Swift 4 is to finalize the ABI. Once that is done, you can mix and match different Swift versions in the same project.
The real "problem" here is that Swift wants to be a "big" language, in the vein of C++ or Rust, as opposed to a "small" language like C or JS where you can read one book. (Swift does have a book, it's 1200 pages.) There's a lot of "stuff": a complex typesystem, many basetypes, generics, extensions, both static and dynamic dispatch, programmer-assisted memory management, closures, visibility, ephemerals, optionals, a mutability-based memory model, etc. etc.
Inevitably some of that stuff won't be quite right and so you
Read the rest
have churn. But ideally you only need 10% of those (it's just that everybody needs a different 10%) and so the amount of churn you personally have to deal with should be low, and can be lower with the appropriate tooling.
[0] https://swift.org/blog/swift-4-0-release-process/
[1] https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution