“Google has given its mystery operating system Fuchsia an update to support Apple’s Swift programming language,” Liam Tung reports for ZDNet. “Swift has quickly become one of hottest languages among developers. Google last week caused a stir after it forked Swift, causing speculation that Google wanted to take the language in a different direction.”
“But Chris Lattner, who created Swift at Apple and now works at Google, told Business Insider that fears over Google forking Swift are a ‘misunderstanding’ stemming from GitHub’s terminology. In GitHub’s parlance, forking and copying mean the same thing,” Tung reports. “Lattner said on Twitter that the Google’s Swift clone was just a ‘staging ground’ and ‘integration point’ that it felt was necessary because so many people at Google are contributing to Swift.”
Swift at Google has enough folks working on it that we need a staging ground/integration point, and we decided it should be public. https://t.co/hyphe0KrU0
— Chris Lattner (@clattner_llvm) November 15, 2017
“One of the things Google is contributing to Swift is adding support to target its Fuchsia OS. Besides macOS and iOS, Swift can be used to target Linux, so Fuchsia adds one more option,” Tung reports. “Unfortunately, this development does little to clarify what Google’s plans are for Fuchsia. It has been developing Fuchia OS in the open but has yet to explain what it’s for, leading some to speculate it could be a replacement for Android, or even be used to combine Chrome OS with Android.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Is Fuchsia an attempt to replace Android, which was originally a BlackBerry clone that was hastily rejiggered by Google at the last minute to mimic Apple’s revolutionary iPhone, or is it a platform for writing universal apps with the ability to port them to various operating systems or is it something else entirely (an IoT OS, perhaps)?
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s Swift creator departs Tesla after just six months – June 21, 2017
Chris Lattner, who designed and built much of Swift, is leaving Apple – January 10, 2017
Apple’s Swift programming language drives enterprise mobile rethink – May 9, 2016
Nearly half of OS X devs want to learn Swift – May 5, 2016
Google mulls adopting Apple’s Swift language for Android – April 8, 2016
Want a developer job? Time to learn Apple’s Swift as demand skyrockets – March 1, 2016
Apple’s open source Swift will open the door for HomeKit – December 16, 2015
Apple has hugely ambitious plans for open-sourced Swift, and hints on what’s coming to iOS – December 15, 2015
After Apple open sources it, IBM puts Swift programming in the cloud – December 4, 2015
Apple officially releases Swift programming language as open source – December 3, 2015
Apple’s open-sourced Swift programming language could change everything – November 25, 2015
Apple’s Swift programming language could soon infiltrate data centers – November 24, 2015
Developers band together to create Mandarin Chinese translation of Apple’s Swift programming language – August 6, 2015
Apple’s Swift breaks into top 20 in dev language survey; bad news for Microsoft’s Visual Basic – July 2, 2015
Apple’s Swift: The future of enterprise app development – June 10, 2015
So Google is now doing the old MS trick of embrace and extend.
Do No Evil?
The whole point of the article was to explain that they are _not_ making a separate version of Swift, just letting the public see their testing area for changes that will be contributed back to the main project of Swift once tested.
Ya right, like I trust Google.
Google can go fork themselves
Google may be finally admitting that Android does suck and they want to eventually close that chapter and try to give us a real operating system for once.
Hey, I can dream, can’t I?
Couldn’t tell you, but I’m sure that some people here will give it a “pre-suck” seal of disapproval at first announcement. It might even turn out to be correct…
You need to know the question first to know it’s correct. But in your case I suspect it’s 42.
Right there with your other yardstick.
Smart move on Google’s part. Wish Chris had stayed at Apple.
I think Chris wishes the same. His job at Tesla ended abruptly. The last I read, he was asking around on the net if anyone wanted to hire him. 🙁
STOP!
This can’t be for realz. Google named an OS “Fuchsia“?!
Sound out that name… I’ll wait….
Here we have Do Know Evil Google literally inviting insult by way of a name that blatantly insinuates the company is…
OUT TO GET YOU
Google F’s Ya.
Outstanding Google! You have officially entered into a state of dementia. Maybe this will help:
And yes, I do know and appreciate both the color and the flower ‘fuchsia’ ( /ˈfjuːʃə/). Neither conjure visions of a company out to steal your life and sell it to the highest bidder.