Google hearts Apple's Swift so much it's pumping out server-side support
After a decade of false starts, Swift is showing backend appeal
Google has recently introduced Google Cloud API Client Libraries for Swift, indicating that the search giant sees potential for the language on the server-side. Swift, initially developed by Apple for client-side applications, has evolved into a systems and cloud language due to its performance and ease of use. Google Cloud Platform Swift libraries, targeting Swift 6.2 and above, leverage SwiftNIO's asynchronous event loops, HTTP/2 multiplexing, gRPC transport, and data race safety features.
Swift's development has been considered developer-friendly and suitable for low-level resource control, which sets it apart from languages like C++ and Rust. Google praises Swift's lightweight runtime, Automatic Reference Counting (ARC), expressive syntax, and compile-time concurrency checking. The new Server Side Cloud Swift SDK is designed for use in servers, containers, and DevOps environments, making it well-suited for building microservices with Swift web frameworks such as Hummingbird or Vapor.
Swift's server-side adoption has been slow, but with the release of Swift 6 featuring data race safety checks, it has become a more intriguing option for backend applications.
Written by urgent.news from The Register Science's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
