On Friday, 21 October 2022 at 14:46:16 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> Swift added reference counting as GC (much because of objective-C) and the result is that the language is quite usable, much more easy to use than Rust. You will not end up with senseless life time compiler error as in Rust.
Swift is probably the best option for writing applications for Apple products, but I don't feel that it will be accepted for portable system level programming, no matter how it changes in the future.
Even if it became a Rust/C++ replica it would still be perceived as being beholden to a singular entity. I can see why the Carbon docs put so much emphasis on no entity having more than 50% influence. "Backed by Google" is a selling point, but "Owned by Google" is a liability.
As more languages appear I think having a more cooperative collaborative approach to design will be something people look for.
Selecting a specific language is a big investment as languages get more complex (even TypeScript has grown to become rather complex). Developers don't want a single "political group" to block a design extension that matters to 20% of the users.
Since languages copy features from each other they are sometimes not all that different in ordinary programming, but cultures can be very different still. So that dimension will perhaps be more and more important in the next few decades.