OT: This Swift thing

[Alain Ketterlin]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:

> 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".

I have seen dozens of projects where Python was dismissed because of the
lack of static typing, and the lack of static analysis tools. I'm
supervising our students during their internship periods in various
industrial sectors. Many of these students suggest Python as the
development language (they learned it and liked it), and the suggestion
is (almost) always rejected, in favor of Java or C# or C/C++.

-- Alain.