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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, 5:05:26 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 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

21 sources
bmc7505·Dec 9, 2021
For the record, Kotlin was open sourced Feb. 13th, 2012 [1]. Swift was open sourced Dec. 3rd, 2015 [2]. So while the first commits happened just a few months apart [3, 4] and these languages may have shared similar influences, Kotlin predates Swift by almost four years in the open. Perhaps their ideas simply were in the air ten years ago, but I think it would be unfair to insinuate that either language was in a "rush to whatever trendy development exists in language design". [1]: https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2012/02/kotlin-goes-open-s... [2]: https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/?id=34 [3]: https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/commit/369b1974782b821e4... [4]: https://github.com/apple/swift/commit/afc81c1855bf711315b8e5...
In Apple Open Source
gavinray·Sep 26, 2021
I want to take the chance while Swift is on the front-page to talk about something mind-blowingly exciting (to me, at least) about it that people might not be aware of: >> Swift has support for C++ interop, without writing manual bindings! << Yes, you read that right. Swift can interop with and import C++ members/values, without needing to write a corresponding Swift type mapping. It's currently the only language I'm aware of that can do this (Nim doesn't count). I think it's because Swift is so integrated into LLVM/clang, that it can do a sort of mixed-compilation of Swift/CXX sources. Such that from a compiler's perspective which language they come from doesn't matter -- but I have no real clue. It's very early, but it can already do some impressive things. The "cxx-interop" tag on the Swift Forums will show you what is basically a t
Read the rest
imeline of it's development and current status: https://forums.swift.org/tag/cxx-interop And here is the "C++ Interopability Manifesto", the outline they have for the feature in the language: https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/main/docs/CppInteroperabilityManifesto.md For a real-world example of using this, here's a test repo from the core developers: https://github.com/plotfi/cxx-interop-test https://github.com/plotfi/cxx-interop-test/blob/main/Sources/CXX/include/CXX.h https://github.com/plotfi/cxx-interop-test/blob/main/Sources/Swift/main.swift You see here direct import and use of "std::" namespace, including "std::vector" and "std::string_view", as well as use of structs and arrays: import CXX // <-- This is CXX.h, local C++ file import std.string_view import std.vector "42".withCString { cstring in let view = std.__1.string_view(cstring) assert(is_str_42(view)) } var MS = MyStruct() var MS1 = MS[0] var v = V() let arr = v.getVec()[0].swift_array() print("std::vector: \(arr)") Fucking mindblowing! It requires a ".modulemap" for the C++ code, but that can be auto-generated with most build tools AFAIK. This is one of the most exciting things happening in tech for me. With Swift supporting Windows now, you have a great language for consuming C/C++ libraries and publishing native binaries or shared libs. Really looking forward to the future developments here. I have never even written Swift, but I've been following the developments here closely. After Swift 5.5 features, looking like a really solid language if you want to do systems programming but can sacrifice some binary size and performance for a higher level language. Particularly the new Actors stuff for safe concurrency. (Also, there's a chance Kotlin Native may get C++ support in the future, which would also be sweet)
In Swift Syntax and Structured Editing Library
woodruffw·Aug 19, 2021
It's actually interesting how many independent implementations of bitcode writers there, given that there are almost no independent bitcode readers (mine is very preliminary, and then there's one from Galois[1]). I believe Swift also does their own serialization in LLVM's bitstream format[2]. I also saw an implementation of the writer in Swift, but now I've lost it. [1]: https://github.com/GaloisInc/llvm-pretty-bc-parser [2]: https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/main/docs/Serialization....
In LLVM Internals: The Bitcode Format
pjmlp·Jun 19, 2021
> This isn't representative of application code and there isn't even any mention of the metrics I mentioned… Yeah, that is the usual answer when benchmarks prove how much urban myth reference counting performance is actually like. > No it doesn't. I told you it didn't the last time you said this. Did you? There is more important stuff in life to store on my brain than a list of who replies to me on hacker news. Anyway, https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/main/stdlib/public/Swift... https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1331735383193903104
In A Tour of Safe Tracing GC Designs in Rust

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