On 23/06/14 05:38 PM, Benjamin Striegel wrote: >> I feel like Rust might be missing out on the free lunch I expect Swift > to provide > > I think that it may be unfounded to expect Swift to spur drastic > improvements to any aspect of LLVM. Apple is already the biggest > benefactor of LLVM, which powers the C compiler their OS is built with, > the Objective-C language that all their apps are written in, the IDE > used to write those apps, and the Javascript engine that powers their > web browser. Despite Swift's arrival, I wouldn't expect any greater > investment in LLVM than Apple does currently (which is a shame, given > the bazillion dollars burning a hole in their pocket). > > I'd like to also note that Apple has no external incentive to improve > Swift. Objective-C was a dead language before Apple's fiat rocketed it > into the position of world's third-most-popular programming language. > Regardless of Swift's implementation or design decisions, it *will* be > one of the most popular languages in the world come this time next year > (likely accompanied by Objective-C's meteoric descent). If Swift were a > fusion of RPG and Malbolge with an implementation written in INTERCAL, > this fact would not change (thankfully, the Swift designers have better > taste). Why bother straining yourself to satisfy a captive audience, > when your only real competitor is whatever dialect of Java that Dalvik > supports?
Apple has also shown that they will keep their code proprietary to maintain a competitive advantage. This is what they did with their 64-bit ARM backend, but eventually relented and landed it upstream because the 'community' version was pulling ahead. They have their own SIL IR for Swift, and doing these optimizations at the SIL layer would be easier. It's harder to do these at a low-level and they can simply sit back and benefit from those improvements without giving away their own secret sauce. This is Apple we're talking about after all... Objective-C was originally only open-source because it was implemented on top of GCC and they were forced into it.
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