Swift has an interesting situation. Within 6 months of its beta release it was already being used to publish iOS & OSX apps.
With it also being open source, and ported to other platforms I can imagine other mobile operating systems also embracing the language in hopes to get more developer traction.
Not to mention that they have taken a little from every language, and server-side swift is a whole different beast.
Yes sir. And I'm no "Apple guy". My first computer was a Commodore64, and I own no Mac. Never have. My only Apple products in my lifetime has been 1 iPod Nano, an AppleTV2 (only for jailbreaking/XBMC) and 1 company iPhone 5S (after 5 years and 4 Android phones, some personal, some company, all running CyanogenMod when possible).
I hate how languages like Go get lumped in with "Google", an association which to me, is negative. For many, people fawn over Google, thinking a for-profit like Google does things in their best interests. When in reality it's temporarily mutually aligned interests.
I'm at the core if anything, a Mozilla guy. Not entirely because I'm not too diehard on the JSAllTheThings movement. I strongly lean towards native, even if my work consists mostly of Python2 backend for webapps. At least with native executing code it's possible to be open source. You never know what's executing serverside. So I'm less of a fan of the so-called "open web" (an oxymoron) than most. And that's discounting the difference in end product that exists between native/web. I like my web to be it's original intended usecase- such as how HN is. Nothing too fancy, data sharing.
I think from a language/implementation standpoint that Swift hit it on the money. That's what I would have wanted out of a Python3. If that were Swift, I'd be a huge fan.
Swift just nailed what I believe people are really looking for. Go is a little sketchy in ways. I don't hate it, don't actively work against it as I do Python3... well, can't say I work against it but I don't extoll its technical churn. But Go at least is trying to solve a real problem, and solves more problems than it creates. Even if I think it squares up against Java more than it does C or Python.
Unfortunately, Swift is associated with Apple which has its own zealots (and zealous haters). It's regretful that programming is now fashion, hype, trend. But I do think they have the best-of-breed language here for general purpose use.
My money and personal contributions to these new wave of languages will definitely be to work on server-side Swift solutions. The thought of a single-language solution with a single GOOD language from backend to front if you use iOS is pretty amazing and I'm really looking forward to that, and Swift backend / web frontend as well.
With it also being open source, and ported to other platforms I can imagine other mobile operating systems also embracing the language in hopes to get more developer traction.
Not to mention that they have taken a little from every language, and server-side swift is a whole different beast.
This is going to be fun ;)