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Talk:Swift (programming language) Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Swift_(programming_language)

Include discussion on performance or remove section

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The section on performance is very short: "Many of the features introduced with Swift have well-known performance and safety trade-offs. Apple has implemented optimizations that reduce this overhead.[77]".

It leads to more questions than answers:

  • What are the performance trade-offs?
    List them! At least include some examples, even if they're supposed to be "well-known" (which is never substantiated with a citation).
  • What are the "well-known" safety trade-offs?
    List them! Same issue as with performance trade-offs.
  • What is the overhead mentioned in the last sentence?
    Since this section is only about performance, it should include at least a summary of the content from the citation.
  • What has apple done to reduce this overhead?
    Shortly summarize the citation.
  • Is the overhead completely neutralized?
    The sentence is completely worthless without knowing how much of that overhead has been compensated. This info is vital for users to decide whether the overhead is of concern.

Without tackling these issues, this whole section just sounds like: "Apple included stuff that is not good for performance or security, but we won't tell you what it is. Apple thought about these issues, so just trust them and assume that they fixed every problem without requiring any prove or explanation".
In short, this section contains as much information as the sentence "trust me, I'm an engineer". Laciuhnf (talk) 15:49, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:53, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Potential error in paragraph under "Basic Syntax" section

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After the third code block in the Basic Syntax section, there's a paragraph beginning:

else statements require that the given condition is true...

From the context surrounding that paragraph, I feel like references to else statements should instead be references to guard statements, but I don't know enough about Swift to be sure. Could someone passing by with more knowledge of Swift please confirm? KCastellino talk 15:35, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Impact and adoption?

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I'm surprised this article is rated B-Class because it seems to have an obvious omission: any discussion of the Swift language's impact on the industry, or its level of adoption (for example, to what extent has it replaced Objective-C for developing Mac/iOS apps? is it used outside the Apple ecosystem?). The sidebar says Swift influenced Rust and V, but the body doesn't describe said influence. I would humbly suggest that a knowledgeable editor consider adding this kind of context (and that maybe the article is C-Class as long as that's missing). Graue (talk) 04:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With a similar motive in mind, I would also suggest more information on chronological introduction of different features since the language is still in it's infancy it's difficult to make heads or tails of _when_ we are talking about. The developer documentation has copyrights that cite 2005, but I'm convinced this is due to the overlap with Objective-C and Cocoa. It's misleading at best IMHO. Chezzwizz (talk) 13:31, 26 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed summary for technical prose

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I've been using Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental large language model to create summaries for the most popular articles with {{Technical}} templates. This article, Swift (programming language), has such a template in the "Features" section. Here is the paragraph summary at grade 5 reading level which Gemini 2.5 Pro suggested for that section:

Swift is a computer language used to write instructions for apps, especially for Apple products like iPhones and Macs. Apple created Swift to be safe, fast, and easier for new people to learn coding. It helps prevent common mistakes by checking the code for errors and managing the computer's memory automatically. Programmers can add new abilities to parts of their code using features called extensions, and Swift has special ways to handle missing information safely so apps don't crash. It can also do multiple tasks at the same time without getting mixed up. Swift works together with older code and includes helpful tools for testing programs and fixing problems.

While I have read and may have made some modifications to that summary, I am not going to add it to the section because I want other editors to review, revise if appropriate, and add it instead. This is an experiment with a few dozen articles initially to see how these suggestions are received, and after a week or two, I will decide how to proceed. Thank you for your consideration. Cramulator (talk) 13:08, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Use of LLM needs to be discussed by the entire Wikipedia community, not just those interested in one article. You can start at WP:Village pump. Sundayclose (talk) 16:11, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am retracting this and the other LLM-generated suggestions due to clear negative consensus at the Village Pump. I will be posting a thorough postmortem report in mid-April to the source code release page. Thanks to all who commented on the suggestions both negatively and positively, and especially to those editors who have manually addressed the overly technical cleanup issue on six, so far, of the 68 articles where suggestions were posted. Cramulator (talk) 01:46, 5 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]