Apple is open-sourcing Swift this week: swift.org, Linux support, package manager, the works. Apple. The company of sealed boxes and NDAs, putting its flagship language on GitHub for anyone to fork. Eighteen months from surprise announcement to community property. The cynical read: they need server-side and education adoption, and closed languages die lonely. The generous read: same facts, said nicer. Either way I get to read the compiler source now, which past-me learning optionals would find unbelievable.
Amazon countered the news cycle with a new Prime Air drone video narrated by Jeremy Clarkson of all people. The delivery drones from the 2013 60 Minutes stunt now look suspiciously like a real program. Two years from “PR stunt, surely” to working prototypes. I keep being wrong about Amazon in the same direction. Updating my priors: when the boring infrastructure company shows a cartoon, believe the cartoon.
Cyber Monday broke records again and our site held (the queue-depth alerts from the fall earned their keep, one autoscale event, zero pages). Boring on-call is the trophy.
TIL: reading real compiler source. The Swift repo’s error messages have code review debates attached. The sausage is made of arguments, even at Apple. Especially at Apple. Deeply comforting.