It has only been a few days since the announcement of Swift going open source and the activity around the project has been incredible. When Apple revealed that Swift would be open source at WWDC earlier this year, I do not think anyone anticipated a release like this.

Expectations

No one really knew what to expect. Was Swift going to be dumped on opensource.apple.com and grow stale with the other projects? Would it be put on GitHub like ResearchKit? Not only is Swift on GitHub, but the Swift team will be working completely in the open. Apple did a spectacular job with the release. Not only do we have the source code, but we have the entire commit history for each project, a very detailed view into the Swift team’s development process, and access to the Swift evolution process. Everything you need to know is on Swift.org.

Swift in the open

For the past few days I have been watching the repositories on GitHub and the Swift mailing lists. It is fascinating. The question is, what will Swift development look like moving forward? Here are some of the interesting things I have seen so far.

I think we’re definitely off to a good start. The community is strong and excited, and Swift is already greatly improved in only three days. As Lattner says, the revolution will be Swift!

That’s all I’ve got for now! If you enjoyed this article, let me know. Maybe I’ll keep creeping and sharing what I find.