Comment by neilv
Comment by neilv 3 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by neilv 3 days ago
[flagged]
Swift is a cross-platform compiled programming language that offers memory safety as a tentpole feature.
SwiftUI is a platform specific API for developers who are writing native apps for that platform.
You can think of Swift as being similar in concept to Rust and SwiftUI as being similar in concept to Win32.
SwiftUI is also now an API for writing Android native apps, too.
I don't know why you skipped over that part? It's maybe like when Google rewrote Java. Win32 is a bad comparison because there's no Win32-compatible API for native apps on other platforms (that I know of?) except for emulation, but the Android SwiftUI project is not using emulation, it runs the code natively and the result is native Android UI.
Apple has not released a version of the SwiftUI framework for Android.
There are third party attempts to create something that lets SwiftUI code run on Android, just as Wine is third party software that allows you to run Win32 apps on Linux.
For example:
> Bringing Swift and SwiftUI to Android
No one said it's first-party. And it's a good thing that it's not first-party! We want multiple options for deploying our code.
As I said, Wine provides emulation. But the SwiftUI on Android project does not emulate - it runs your SwiftUI code natively (as Swift that is compiled for Android), and maps it to native Android components, fully accessible and meeting platform expectations.
Completely different result and experience.
This also means that you can extend the SwiftUI on Android code with Android-specific code that will not run on iOS, to add other Android-specific UI. This is impossible with Wine + Win32.
https://swiftcrossui.dev is also promising for somewhat SwiftUI compatible APIs across desktop OSs
I like LLVM, and I enjoy a good UI focused-language like Vala or Obj-C. Building with or contributing to Swift is a waste of my time as a Linux developer, it was in 2018 and it still is in 2025. Foundation will not fully support Linux until the late 2030s, and even a fully-implimented SwiftUI translation is still ignoring basic GNOME HIG and lagging behind best-practices. I would not be developing apps I want to use, or ship to users on other platforms. Electron would be preferable to cross-platform SwiftUI, and deep down you know it.
And that's my sympathetic opinion, as a Linux developer who loves their native UI trinkets and pseudopolish. Windows developers have dozens more options and likely won't find out Swift ever existed until Swift 2 is announced during a keynote presentation. Broader adoption of Swift has simply failed. If the language disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't know as nothing on my system consumes Swift as a dependency according to nix-tree.
Obj-C is unusable for many new Apple platform features. Not suitable for building anymore.
Electron - not available on iOS, so it is out of the question.
I make a living off my iOS/macOS apps so I am interested in ways to diversify without giving up the platform that makes me my money. These cross platform solutions for Swift are interesting for those targeting Apple platforms. I agree they are not compelling if you do not prioritize Apple platforms.
I can't make a living off Linux like I can on Apple. Android is also much less profitable. So Apple continues to make business sense for me, for what I build and who my customers are. And thus Swift.
I think it’s only the 193 series of classes that are industry-related electives. Swift is open source too.
People have such strong delusions about universities (and they're so vocal about them too).
You can't have ideals about other people's things - you want to be idealistic (ideological?), feel free to start your own uni.
Academia and higher education have long-established ideals, institutions receive considerations from society in light of that, and they are also supposed to be regulated in some ways (e.g., accreditation).
I think a better defense than the libertarian "don't tell me what to do with my property" would've taken the angle that "university X isn't actually becoming a factory for pumping out techbro libertarian scourges of society".
When I was in school, the corporate shill language was MATLAB, and even today not every program has moved on to greener pastures (Python/numpy, Julia). But doesn't Swiftui support Android now? https://github.com/skiptools/skip, I'm extremely skeptical and critical of anything Apple does, and I don't like programming languages without critical mass of community and corporate contributers, but seems like Swift is going in the right direction here.