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mxcl / AmA

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Any plan to reimplement Homebrew in Swift? #9

Open purpleblues opened 5 years ago

mxcl commented 5 years ago

If I had the impetus to rebuild Homebrew, I would do it in Swift. I originally chose Ruby because:

1) I wanted it to just work after a git clone on macOS, a vanilla install of macOS came with Ruby, so a clone with all the files pre-arranged in the right shape was a working brew installation. 2) I wanted a minimal fuss programming language that would encourage contribution. This in 2009 meant a scripting language since there was no minimal fuss “real” languages due to the language complexity and the nightmare that was build systems.

№1 would not be as easy with Swift, but anyway, we eventually made an installation script for brew, and nowadays I doubt you can just clone brew, the current maintainers don't echo all my initial desires for the product. Maybe it doesn't matter that much, but I really wanted people to realize brew cared about you knowing what was going on and what brew did to your computer.

№1 could still be done though, since Swift can be scripted. It would have to do a build as part of the initial run, but it's the sort of thing I'd consider worth the time to implement.

Swift satisfies №2., it needs a build system still, but SwiftPM just works, so it's fine. The language though is very satisfying. Ruby is beautiful and I still love it, but Swift is elegant and safe, so very safe. I am a huge believer in quality, robust software for my users. Nothing makes me happier than to imagine that my software is working for my users. Swift makes it possible to write code that just works without crashes or bugs.

nidegen commented 5 years ago

any changes to the impetus now that Catalina will drop ruby?😃

mxcl commented 5 years ago

If I suddenly got super rich and didn't have to work for money, I would yes.

borud commented 3 years ago

I can understand the original decision to go with a scripting language. And 10 years ago I would have made that choice myself. In the mean time I've realized that depending on any scripting language that comes preinstalled with the OS is a disaster waiting to happen. It will always be a bit older - and in the case of Python: so old to the point of being more of a liability than an advantage. Ruby might be a bit better, but you're still at the mercy of Apple.

I'm not very familiar with Swift myself. I've just spent a few weekends dabbling with it, but I am assuming it is easy to produce binaries for all platforms?