When reviewing a proposal, here are some questions to consider:
- What is your evaluation of the proposal?
+1
- Is the problem being addressed significant enough to warrant a change to Swift?
Yes
- Does this proposal fit well with the feel and direction of Swift?
To an acceptable degree.
I echo and sympathize with the concerns/comments from @Karl, @codafi, and @GarthSnyder. I am not sure that the actual proposed syntax is the best possible incarnation. However, I also do not feel well qualified to debate this, and overall have significant trust in the core team to make a good decision.
The primary reason for my +1 is that I have worked on several large Swift codebases which would benefit considerably from this feature. My strongest feeling is that this feature, in roughly any form the core team would accept, is so compelling and important to simply get into the language, that that trumps the syntactical concerns.
I do strongly feel that Swift needs more experimental feature mechanisms, and I would like to see more attention paid to the technical mechanisms to safely evolve syntax, so that the community can become unblocked to explore the innovation possible with new features, without also having the feeling that we are potentially committing to a syntax for 10 years.
Ultimately, my belief is that if a better syntax becomes available, that Swift can/will find a way to evolve towards it. In the meantime, I think this feature is important enough to have access to for supporting large code bases and novel paradigms.
- If you have used other languages or libraries with a similar feature, how do you feel that this proposal compares to those?
No direct experience.
- How much effort did you put into your review? A glance, a quick reading, or an in-depth study?
Moderate.