bigyabai 2 days ago

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.

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  • wahnfrieden a day ago

    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.

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