A Wired article about Swift coming to the server, particularly after the imminent open-sourcing, that also mentions D as an alternative, especially since it's written by the same guy who wrote about D for Wired last year:

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/apples-swift-ios-programming-language-is-being-remade-for-data-centers/

Will be interesting to see how Swift does, a good natural experiment for those pushing D to focus on one niche before expanding, as Swift is doing really well on one of the most important development platforms today, iOS, before expanding onto the server.  Of course, Apple is unlikely to really push it on the server, other than open-sourcing and accepting patches, so they have a built-in excuse if it doesn't do well. ;)

On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 at 17:59:35 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Will be interesting to see how Swift does

Considering it won't be available for Windows, I'd guess not very well and it will remain a niche language until it does. There's a reason D shot up in popularity after it started to support windows more thoroughly.

Sure you can say that since it will be open source, people can create Windows versions. But without Apple merging changes upstream (which they have never said they would do) I really don't see those efforts lasting long before people realize the effort involved probably isn't worth it.

On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 at 21:20:41 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 at 17:59:35 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Will be interesting to see how Swift does
>
> Considering it won't be available for Windows, I'd guess not very well and it will remain a niche language until it does.

I think it's niche languages that are developed first on Windows, ;) as there's a lot more money going towards new app development for iOS these days.  Popular mobile apps like Snapchat do not even bother developing for Windows _or_ the web (I just had to look that up, as I'd never use such an app, just what I'd heard from others ;) ), so that you cannot even _use_ them on Windows.  Imagine that!

> There's a reason D shot up in popularity after it started to support windows more thoroughly.

This is a common misconception, but D was initially developed and released _on_ Windows 15 years ago, as Walter is a Windows guy.  It did not add linux support till a couple years later:

http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/changelog1.html#new063

Yes, Win64 support came later than linux/x64: blame Microsoft's closed toolchain and proprietary, undocumented formats for that.  Perhaps they're learning their lesson with their recent open-sourcing of their CV/PDB debug format.

> Sure you can say that since it will be open source, people can create Windows versions. But without Apple merging changes upstream (which they have never said they would do) I really don't see those efforts lasting long before people realize the effort involved probably isn't worth it.

Yeah, I assumed they'd accept patches since they do for llvm/clang, and Swift comes from that umbrella rather than their other open-source projects that tend to just code dump occasionally.

On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 at 17:59:35 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> A Wired article about Swift coming to the server, particularly after the imminent open-sourcing, that also mentions D as an alternative, especially since it's written by the same guy who wrote about D for Wired last year:
>
> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/apples-swift-ios-programming-language-is-being-remade-for-data-centers/
>
> Will be interesting to see how Swift does, a good natural experiment for those pushing D to focus on one niche before expanding, as Swift is doing really well on one of the most important development platforms today, iOS, before expanding onto the server.  Of course, Apple is unlikely to really push it on the server, other than open-sourcing and accepting patches, so they have a built-in excuse if it doesn't do well. ;)

I don't know Swift well enough to comment on its features or merits, but it is naturally a success on iOS, because loads of people develop for iOS and sooner or later Apple's new favorite child will get everybody's attention. Server side, hm, I don't know. Will it run on Linux? How common are Apple servers? As far as I know, most server systems are Linux/Unix or Windows. That would make Swift a niche language on niche servers, wouldn't it :)

It's nice, though, that D was mentioned in an Apple related article.

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 10:06:14 UTC, Chris wrote:
> I don't know Swift well enough to comment on its features or merits, but it is naturally a success on iOS, because loads of people develop for iOS and sooner or later Apple's new favorite child will get everybody's attention. Server side, hm, I don't know. Will it run on Linux? How common are Apple servers? As far as I know, most server systems are Linux/Unix or Windows. That would make Swift a niche language on niche servers, wouldn't it :)

Apple announced earlier this year that Swift will be ported to linux and open-sourced, so yes, it will.

> It's nice, though, that D was mentioned in an Apple related article.

It also mentions Go and Rust as alternatives.

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 10:24:14 UTC, Joakim wrote:

>
> Apple announced earlier this year that Swift will be ported to linux and open-sourced, so yes, it will.

Then I suppose that companies who use Linux servers and also develop for iOS may adopt it.

However, there are two factors to be considered.

1) it might not be worth the hassle to use swift on the server. If you also cater for Android etc., you would either lock yourself in or have to maintain two systems.

2) Linux people are naturally skeptical of anything coming from a big company. What if the Linux version always lags behind, because it's not top priority? What if certain new features are Apple only (to give their own servers an advantage)? What if this causes a mess of Linux patches and 3rd party libraries?

Server Swift might really end up as a niche within a niche.

> It also mentions Go and Rust as alternatives.

You would expect that alright, but D mentioned together with the marketing giants Apple and Google? That's nice. In this way people will read about Swift and hear "D" as well.

I'm too lazy to find a better post to say this about OSX but:
I'm pretty sure Apple no longer make server hardware.

Hint, https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/os-x-server/id883878097?mt=12
It's literally an app now.

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 08:55:28 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> There's a reason D shot up in popularity after it started to support windows more thoroughly.
>
> This is a common misconception, but D was initially developed and released _on_ Windows 15 years ago, as Walter is a Windows guy.  It did not add linux support till a couple years later:
>
> http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/changelog1.html#new063

I did say "more thoroughly" on purpose :)

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 10:38:52 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 10:24:14 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> Apple announced earlier this year that Swift will be ported to linux and open-sourced, so yes, it will.
>
> Then I suppose that companies who use Linux servers and also develop for iOS may adopt it.

Or just anybody deploying to linux.

> However, there are two factors to be considered.
>
> 1) it might not be worth the hassle to use swift on the server. If you also cater for Android etc., you would either lock yourself in or have to maintain two systems.

Only if you're counting the Android device, you could run Swift on iOS and the server without a problem.  And it won't be long before Swift is ported to Android too, as linux support is most of what's needed, so you'd only need Java for the native Android UI and Java-only APIs, ie the frontend of your Android app.

> 2) Linux people are naturally skeptical of anything coming from a big company. What if the Linux version always lags behind, because it's not top priority? What if certain new features are Apple only (to give their own servers an advantage)? What if this causes a mess of Linux patches and 3rd party libraries?

I think the linux server crowd is much bigger than that old corporate-doubting handful these days.  I doubt Apple has any plans to push it as a server option, beyond porting it to linux, so I don't see them disadvantaging linux.  It will be up to third parties like the company mentioned in the article to develop it as a real server alternative.

> Server Swift might really end up as a niche within a niche.

Or it might end up becoming really popular, as a compiled, modern language that can be used on mobile and the server.

I don't really care how Swift does or follow it, but it will be competition for D, as it has generics, unlike Go, and doesn't have Rust's unfamiliar syntax or stringent emphasis on memory safety.  It's an up-and-coming competitor for D people to watch out for.

On Wednesday, 25 November 2015 at 16:02:18 UTC, Joakim wrote:

[snip]

>> Server Swift might really end up as a niche within a niche.
>
> Or it might end up becoming really popular, as a compiled, modern language that can be used on mobile and the server.
>
> I don't really care how Swift does or follow it, but it will be competition for D, as it has generics, unlike Go, and doesn't have Rust's unfamiliar syntax or stringent emphasis on memory safety.  It's an up-and-coming competitor for D people to watch out for.

With Apple behind it, it might become popular, but not necessarily in the OSS community. What if Apple started to make their own Apple specific extensions that are not open sourced and have to be backengineered on Linux. Then Swift would end up like OpenStep, wouldn't it?