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swiftlang
swift
Swift2015–2026
swiftlang / swift

swift

The Swift Programming Language

Languages & Compilers
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
203Distinct people
269Mentions
3Explicit recommenders
70.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

The Swift Programming Language

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

As an iOS engineer, I'm a bit biased, but I'd still say it's currently not practical to learn it if you're not doing Apple development. That said, I love the language, and it's…

austinl used a recommendation phrase. 3 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

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 5:03:38 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 year269 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-12-03 15:21:41 UTC to 2026-03-26 19:15:06 UTC.

0102030402015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 35 mentions; 11 submissions, 24 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 41 mentions; 10 submissions, 31 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 40 mentions; 7 submissions, 33 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 2 submissions, 10 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 25 mentions; 8 submissions, 17 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 27 mentions; 6 submissions, 21 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 21 mentions; 8 submissions, 13 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 3 submissions, 20 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 19 mentions; 1 submissions, 18 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 1 submissions, 10 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 1 submissions, 11 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 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 UTC351124
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC411031
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC40733
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12210
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC25817
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC27621
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC21813
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23320
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC19118
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11110
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12111
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

What Hacker News says

41 sources
favorited·Oct 19, 2016
For anyone interested in similar tools, Microsoft recently published a protocol[1] for this type of service, and an implementation[2] of it for VSCode+NodeJS. Swift also has a library[3] called SourceKit which does the same thing for Swift – it can run as an out-of-process daemon, and people have written integrations for Atom, Emacs, etc. to get autocomplete, syntax highlighting, def links, etc. [1]https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol [2]https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-languageserver-node [3]https://github.com/apple/swift/tree/master/tools/SourceKit
In Introducing Rust Language Server
drtse4·Sep 14, 2016
Yes, not really a problem in that case. But let's not forget that this release also contains nearly 50 other source breaking swift-evolution proposals (full changelog here: https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md). But one of the things I like about how the language is begin developed is that everyone involved is aware that having the language in a constant state of flux is painful, and try to provide useful warning messages (or wizards if you use XCode) for those that will need to update their code to a newer release sooner or later.
In Swift 3.0 Released
millstone·Jul 5, 2016
You can cast in any direction amongst protocol objects, concrete types, and generic types. You can also dynamically inspect the type itself (without needing an instance of it). For example, say we wish to write a function that builds an array from an arbitrary sequence. But as a fast path, if the sequence is already an array, just return it: func makeArray<T:SequenceType>(from values:T) -> [T.Generator.Element] { if let alreadyAnArray = values as? [T.Generator.Element] { return alreadyAnArray } else { return Array(values) } } or we can use a Golang-style technique to dispatch to a more specific protocol. See for example how debug descriptions are generated by checking conformance to a series of protocols in turn [1]: https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/1e2d192b61c9003d8b8a8593... My
Read the rest
understanding is that this is more limited in Rust, though I'm not too familiar with how Any works - please correct if I'm wrong.
In Ask HN: Rust or Swift for system programming?
joewillsher·May 19, 2016
Here’s your explanation: https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/ErrorHandlin... There has been discussion about statically typed errors on the evolution mailing list — some core team members said they may look into in the future and others seeming more doubtful of its usefulness. Why do you think a typed error handling model is better than introspecting the error at the catch site, I’m not sure I buy it?
In Swift: Things I really wanted that won’t make it

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