[Draft] Tuple-Based Compound Optional Binding

I’m not really interested in a really rich language, just the most simple thing possible that lets me create rich apps. I like Vladimir’s description of there being more when you need it.

(I guess what I am concerned about is complexity as a writer. I want everything to be as consistent and logical as possible. I don’t really want any situations as a writer where I’m like ‘now hang on, this follows these particular rules’, or ‘this is this particular edge case’. I guess I’m a little worried about the piecemeal nature of the evolution process. Sometimes I think the way Apple works is so great since that they ‘marinate’ things for so long (e.g. Siri capabilities), they allow it internally to be discussed and prototyped and be released when it’s ready and not sooner.)

Patrick

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On 16 Jun 2016, at 1:42 AM, L. Mihalkovic <laurent.mihalkovic@gmail.com> wrote:

On Jun 15, 2016, at 5:04 PM, Austin Zheng <austinzheng@gmail.com <mailto:austinzheng@gmail.com>> wrote:

On Jun 14, 2016, at 7:12 AM, L. Mihalkovic via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

On Jun 14, 2016, at 11:31 AM, Patrick Smith via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

Thanks Xiaodi. Interesting arguments there. It possibly seems a shame to me, because it has knock on effects of making other things more complicated. But I do see how for the most simple case of unwrapping a single Optional, it makes sense.

As much as I would like Brent’s proposal to make things easier to type, I think nesting things inside a tuple, where a reader must keep track of which input matches which output, could lead to harder to follow code.

Isomehow I think last yesterday's keynote should recast some expectations about the degree of complexity (richness) the language will ever reach... Somehow xamarin/c# might endupmbeing swift++ for many people

How so? What proposals might the core team accept that would confirm your suspicions; would this be one of them? Maybe I should drop Swift and move to C#, if that language is going to end up so much better than Swift in the future. It's never good to be tied down to a single language.

I think it is non-disputable that objc is a very simple language when compared to more recent languages. Today swift is capable of doing a lot of things, while still being a simpler language than older ones. Si the question for some people might be how much richer will swift become? Will it rival scala's type system? Will it rival java/scala/kotlin/ceylon/c++ for the ability to organize large codebases? Will it have the runtime/compile time code fluidity of D? Etc.. The only way to find out is ... there is none. So then who is swift for? Apple wants it usable by people off the street... not people with a degree in computer science, but the people who may one day get a degree or not. So i wonder this plus the fact that objc was enough for so many years doesn't simply mean that there is already a cap on the sophistication swift will ever get!!! that they will touch everything around it, before they push it. Today i have a degree of expressiveness with c# that i cannot have with swift, is the gap going to increase of decrease? That is what i care to know about before I advise large corps to invest in swift or not. bored/curious devs (i included) will always easily pick it up, but should i advise a CTO to invest on it...

Thanks Xiaodi. Interesting arguments there. It possibly seems a shame
to me, because it has knock on effects of making other things more
complicated. But I do see how for the most simple case of unwrapping a
single Optional, it makes sense.

As much as I would like Brent’s proposal to make things easier to type,
I think nesting things inside a tuple, where a reader must keep track
of which input matches which output, could lead to harder to follow code.

Isomehow I think last yesterday's keynote should recast some
expectations about the degree of complexity (richness) the language will
ever reach... Somehow xamarin/c# might endupmbeing swift++ for many people

How so? What proposals might the core team accept that would confirm your
suspicions; would this be one of them? Maybe I should drop Swift and move
to C#, if that language is going to end up so much better than Swift in
the future. It's never good to be tied down to a single language.

I think it is non-disputable that objc is a very simple language when
compared to more recent languages. Today swift is capable of doing a lot of
things, while still being a simpler language than older ones. Si the
question for some people might be how much richer will swift become? Will
it rival scala's type system? Will it rival java/scala/kotlin/ceylon/c++
for the ability to organize large codebases? Will it have the
runtime/compile time code fluidity of D? Etc.. The only way to find out is
... there is none. So then who is swift for? Apple wants it usable by
people off the street... not people with a degree in computer science, but
the people who may one day get a degree or not. So i wonder this plus the
fact that objc was enough for so many years doesn't simply mean that there
is already a cap on the sophistication swift will ever get!!! that they
will touch everything around it, before they push it. Today i have a degree
of expressiveness with c# that i cannot have with swift, is the gap going
to increase of decrease? That is what i care to know about before I advise
large corps to invest in swift or not. bored/curious devs (i included) will
always easily pick it up, but should i advise a CTO to invest on it...

Very interesting opinion, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I believe many of us(here in mailing list) have the same thoughts and questions.

I'd like to believe that Apple wants to make Swift be very easy and simple on start, but very powerful and feature reach when you(as a developer) grows and when you need "more". So I hope Apple will keep Swift very simple to start using by "people off the street", but at the same time will increase Swift features for 'advanced' programming and keep the language on the level near the other modern languages like C# and will adopt best features/conceptions from other languages.

I don't know about that... There r 2 ways to look at it.. 1) in complete isolation: then everything is possible, the sky is the limit, and guessing is just that. But there is another way to look at it 2) apple is apple is apple, so what they do today is the result of a decision yesterday, and every decision is part of series and therefore a hint about every other. So what would a single button mouse, a ever thinning chassis, the culture of amortizing the cost of prod dev over huge production runs covering 3 to 4 years, or the removal of so many features from so many apps have in common? I think it is a hint about how what role software plays in the company. And that I think gives an element of answer. Swift is 2y/o (5 if u count internal years), and today we r looking at v3.0, and what are the biggest announcements abt it @ wwdc?

C# is more mature language but, relating to Apple development, you need to deal with its runtime(Mono) and garbage collection. So there is some drawbacks in using of C# also, as I understand.

Maybe pb for watch os, likely irrelevant for the others. I thk the biggest pb in the arena is elsewhere. Apple does not like to share...

···

On Jun 15, 2016, at 7:53 PM, Vladimir.S <svabox@gmail.com> wrote:

On 15.06.2016 18:42, L. Mihalkovic via swift-evolution wrote:
On Jun 15, 2016, at 5:04 PM, Austin Zheng <austinzheng@gmail.com >> <mailto:austinzheng@gmail.com>> wrote:

On Jun 14, 2016, at 7:12 AM, L. Mihalkovic via swift-evolution >>>> <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:
On Jun 14, 2016, at 11:31 AM, Patrick Smith via swift-evolution >>>> <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

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