inessential by Brent Simmons

Ash and Marcel

Ash Furrow, Adulterated Objective-C:

…maybe it’s not important to re-invent Objective-C’s dynamic runtime in Swift. The language is far more static than Objective-C. And besides, a dynamic runtime is only a set of tools used to solve problems. In a different context, like Swift, different tools might be better suited.

Problems currently solved with dynamic programming should have solutions just as good (if not better) in Swift and future Swift-only app frameworks. And “better” can’t mean, “Yes, it’s a big pain now and inelegant, but the compiler’s happy.”

I’m skeptical that there is a solution short of adopting the same kinds of dynamic features Objective-C has, but I’m only skeptical. I don’t say it’s impossible. I want to be surprised and amazed.

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Marcel Weiher, What’s Missing in the Discussion about Dynamic Swift:

The truly amazing thing about KVC, CoreData, bindings, HOM, NSUndoManager and so on is that none of them were known when Objective-C was designed, and none of them needed specific language/compiler support to implement.

Instead, the language was and is sufficiently malleable that its users can think up these things and then go to implement them. So instead of being an afterthought, a legacy concern or a feature grudgingly and minimally implemented, the metasystem should be the primary focus of new language development. (And unsurprisingly, that’s the case in Objective-Smalltalk).