OT: This Swift thing

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 7:42 PM, Alain Ketterlin
<alain at dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> wrote:
> Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 6:14 PM, Alain Ketterlin
>> <alain at dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> wrote:
>>> Swift's memory management is similar to python's (ref. counting). Which
>>> makes me think that a subset of python with the same type safety would
>>> be an instant success.
>>
>> In the same way that function annotations to give type information
>> were an instant success?
>
> If they were useful, they would be used more. I have made several uses
> of (a variant of)
>
> http://code.activestate.com/recipes/578528-type-checking-using-python-3x-annotations/

Precisely. I don't see that there's a huge body of coders out there
just itching to use "Python but with some type information", or we'd
be seeing huge amounts of code, well, written in Python with type
information. They've been seen as an interesting curiosity, perhaps,
but not as "hey look, finally Python's massive problem is solved". So
I don't think there's much call for a *new language* on the basis that
it's "Python plus type information".

There's more call for "Python with C-like syntax", given the number of
times people complain about indentation. (There already is such a
language, but it's somewhat obscure, so it's quite likely Apple aren't
aware of its merits.) There might be call for "Python that can be
compiled efficiently to the such-and-such backend". But not "Python
with declared-type variables", not as a feature all of its own.

ChrisA