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swiftlang
swift-evolution
Markdown2015–2026
swiftlang / swift-evolution

swift-evolution

This maintains proposals for changes and user-visible enhancements to the Swift Programming Language.

Languages & Compilers
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
105Distinct people
154Mentions
2Explicit recommenders
15.9KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 1:03:20 AM 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.

05101520252015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 7 submissions, 4 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 24 mentions; 4 submissions, 20 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 5 submissions, 7 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 2 submissions, 9 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 4 submissions, 7 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 1 submissions, 9 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 20 mentions; 6 submissions, 14 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 18 mentions; 5 submissions, 13 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 17 mentions; 5 submissions, 12 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* 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
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1174
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC24420
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1257
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1129
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1147
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1019
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC20614
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC18513
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC17512
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505

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 GitHub

What Hacker News says

5 sources
Someone·Jul 10, 2026
> I have a better solution: address the root cause of unsafe semantics by not using raw indexed for-loops, unless one absolutely needs an index, in which case one should generate it with std::views::enumerate. That’s why Swift completely removed that kind of for loop (https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo...) > This stuff compiles to broadly the same assembly. At the cost of requiring a more complex compiler. Also, C/C++ won’t find “broadly the same” sufficient. They’ll want to see the same performance.
In Almost Always Unsigned
anextio·Mar 2, 2026
>[1] https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... -- apologies to the authors, but even as a previous C++ guy, my brain twisted at that. Inside Swift is a slim language waiting to get out... and that slim language is just a safer Objective C. These kinds of features are not intended for use in daily application development. They're systems-language features designed for building high performance, safe, very-low-level code. It will be entirely optional for the average Swift developer to learn how to use these features, just in the same way that it's optional for someone to learn Rust.
In Why Objective-C
vintagedave·Mar 2, 2026
I really miss Objective-C, and in the world of Swift craziness [1] I'm reminded often of this blog post [2] wondering what would have happened if Apple hadn't encountered Second System Syndrome for its recommended language. (There's a decent argument it encountered it in iOS and macOS too.) [1] https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... -- apologies to the authors, but even as a previous C++ guy, my brain twisted at that. Inside Swift is a slim language waiting to get out... and that slim language is just a safer Objective C. [2] https://medium.com/goodones/pareto-optimal-apple-devtools-b4...
In Why Objective-C
hn-acct·Feb 1, 2026
https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... All of these changes improve the ergonomics of async/await. Fewer hops and a better alignment of when one would expect a hop to occur. https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... async defer is nice too but it's not in the 6.2 public release AFAICT.
In Swift is a more convenient Rust (2023)

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