The unbearable Swiftness of web search

Swift proposal SE-0086 removed the NS prefix from many types in the Swift Foundation library. In doing so, it moves Swift away from its Cocoa roots to establish a cleaner language palette to work with. Swift adheres to a philosophy that type names should be clear, consise, and without needless prefixes.

The result are names that are intuitively obvious, easy to understand, and a real pain to search for. If you thought tracking down information on Swift filters, conversions, mapping, strides, streaming, and notifications was hard, then you may appreciate what it’s like to search for Swift Bundle, Operation, Process, or Thread.

Swift (the language) is now gaining sufficient traction that searches are far more responsive for programming than they used to be. Still, it  helps to throw in an extra word or two like codesample, or type to focus your search. You may also want to limit searches to, for example, “site:apple.com”.

And, yes, you can always pick up one of those Swift Calendars and read about Swift Dates. Swift wasn’t named after a certain pop star. It just sometimes acts like it was.

p.s. For Dave Abrahams: COW optimization.

4 Comments

  • This might be useful – https://kapeli.com/dash

    • Are there new features in Dash that let you find articles and sample code in addition to documentation? That would be cool

  • I personally just love all the ‘job matches’ that get emailed to me about working for Swift transportation.

  • Most needless proposal ever. Feels like a change for the sake of change.
    What about name conflicts with your existing code?
    Who says that some classes are core and fundamental?