First a bit of context. As a follower / user of Haiku I became aware of Serenity - another hobbyist operating system - with its own browser called Ladybird. There have already been efforts to port this browser to Haiku. It was then announced that this browser will be forked from the main operating system which was seen as promising because the author of Serenity (Andreas Kling) specialised in browser design. Although Haiku already has its WebPositive browser, it languishes behind other web browsers. As with the rest of Serenity, Ladybird was written in C++ just like Haiku (and indeed Genode). So far so good.
However it was inevitable that many would ask whether C++ was an appropriate choice to write a new browser given the fad for âsafeâ languages. Whereas it might seem that language choice nowadays could be summed up as âthe answer is Rust, now what was the questionâ, Ladybird decided to road test a few languages and - in a surprise development - announced that Swift worked best for them and they would adopt that in future.
This has led to a long and stimulating thread on Haiku forum about bringing Swift to Haiku. As far as Genode / Sculpt is concerned the benefits of being able to build Ladybird would seem to justify porting Swift, and these benefits would accrue with any further projects that use that language.
With the above in mind, has there been previous interest in bringing over Swift to Genode? Has much consideration been given to the benefits and the challenges in doing so? Would it provide a more accessible language for novices - like myself - than native C++ or the already established Rust?