Swift is a neat language, but it’s a hard sell for server-side software. The ecosystem is tiny, and there’s nothing you gain from using it instead of Go or Rust for infra / distsys.

Also, it works okay at best with VS Code, and you couldn’t pay me to use Xcode.

Kotlin tried doing similar things to gain adoption on the server side. But server-side programming is a crowded space, and people just don’t like writing distsys code in another JVM language. Swift’s story is a little better on that front.

If you want a quick-and-dirty language, Python and TypeScript do the job. For perf-sensitive, highly concurrent environments, Go is hard to compete against. A lot of ops tooling and infra code is written in Go. For systems programming and embedded code, Rust is a better choice.

So while it’s fun to think about what language X gives you in terms of syntax, in practice it’s rarely enough to pick a language like Swift for your next non-toy backend distsys work.

Also, Apple. Given their stance against free and open source software, I wouldn't be too thrilled to pick a language that works better in their walled garden.

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jabwd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This makes me think you haven't really tried it ever? Sure writing a hello world is something but, one of the best features of Swift on the server side is that it seamlessly interopts with anything C (and nowadays C++, though that is after my time).

I wrote an entire, well performing backend in Swift because I could just directly plug in to already existing libraries without having ot provide a whole bunch of "FFI" glue.

All the other languages you suggest is something that Swift excels at while staying performant (also none of those have an IDE like Xcode so idk why you even bring it up). Though for actual systems programming I don't think Rust can be beaten by Swift, simply because of its more explicit (and therefore confronting) nature.

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myko 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I have been using Swift Vapor for personal projects for awhile and it's great. I kind of regret it now on some projects since I use a lot of Go too and I miss the speed of compiling/testing when I'm using agentic coding (where my goal is to put the agent into virtuous loops leading to a success state) - it just takes longer in Swift.

	▲	rednafi 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In agentic workflows, Go’s fast compiler and simple syntax make things so much easier. I no longer write Python or JavaScript, even for trivial scripts. Why suffer sluggish performance or tooling nightmares when choosing a typed language no longer costs much? As for Swift, it’s a harder sell. The docs aren’t there. The libraries aren’t that great. Apple-ism scares away a ton of folks, and the alternatives create less friction.