Ask HN: Will server-side Swift be succesful?

2 points by throwawaysky9 7y ago ↗ HN

I'm curious to hear HN's opinion on Swift on the server-side. I'm very excited about it myself (have been dabbling with Vapor, a Swift web framework).

I see a potential road-block for Swift's becoming really popular as a server-side language: The default ecosystem for Swift/Vapor development seems to be macOS + Xcode, and while an Ubuntu version is available, it 1) isn't available for the newest Ubuntu version yet, and 2) there's no Xcode on Ubuntu, so you'll miss out of the things that Xcode can give you that a command-line Swift interpreter can't. Even Vapor's own hello world example relies on Xcode. And if you're on Windows, your only option seems to be running an (outdated) version of Ubuntu in a virtual machine.

Point is, while Swift and Vapor are great, Swift may not reach its full potential unless developers are less tied to a specific OS and editor/IDE. What do you think?

(Btw., when asking a question like the above, some people will say, "just use the best tool for the job". This is a common opinion, but in reality the popularity of a language and framework means a huge deal when it comes to getting help, looking up answers, hiring programmers, hosting your project easily, etc.).

1 comment

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elpakal 7y ago ↗

> Swift may not reach its full potential unless developers are less tied to a specific OS and editor/IDE

I agree if our context is in regards to Developer adoption relative to other web languages and platforms. I don't think however that Swift's server side ambitions right now fall there though - instead, to me, it aims to seek out Developers already using Xcode to give them an extra tool in the toolbelt.

I also think the reason you are suggesting Xcode is needed for server side development here is because of the Vapor framework and not Swift or the Swift compiler.