[swift-evolution] [Swift4] Priorities and Sugar

[Chris Lattner]

On Jul 29, 2016, at 5:05 PM, Erica Sadun <erica at ericasadun.com> wrote:
>> I expect/hope each of the topics listed in the email to turn into active threads of discussion.  If you or others have questions about them, feel free to ask now.  That said, major design work on them probably won’t kick off in earnest until Swift 3 is closer to being out the door.
> 
> A single asynchronously updated document can host ideas that may not yet be ready for the development timeline. I'm not saying they shouldn't also appear in threads, but I'd like to see an Apple-sourced wishlist given equal status with formal proposals. There is *so* much traffic on-list, and a lot gets lost. I speak as someone who has a vested interest in keeping on top of what's happening on-list.

Moving into early Swift 4 planning and development, we have no desires beyond what I listed in the big email.  There is no long laundry list, it is a few specific (big!) topics.

We specifically do not want a surge of proposals.


>>> * A way to submit pitches for early design review intervention on a regular calendar, so pitches without legs get cut off early and mercifully, and traffic is reduced.
>> 
>> I’m not sure what you mean by this.
> 
> Remember the design review meetings that reviewed proposals and gave feedback? (e.g. http://ericasadun.com/2016/03/16/behind-the-scenes-swift-core-team-design-discussion-315/) It seems like a huge amount of effort, late in the process. It would be great to step back to a less developed preliminary proposal (say 1-2 paragraphs), that gets thumbs up/down without so much investment of list and team resources on a regular design review schedule. I'm thinking "early intervention”.

Sure, this makes a lot of sense as proposals are coming together for the areas that are on topic.

>>> * Swift-academy outreach for those of us who can code but fall somewhere between starter bugs and full contribution.
>> 
>> I’m also not sure what you mean by this, but it sounds interesting!
> 
> Ted's email (https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20160725/025587.html) highlighted the gap between designing ideas and writing code. Or as you wrote, "Software scheduling (particularly with open source) continues to be difficult-to-impossible to predict." Outreach (maybe through slack?) could help guide almost-but-not-quite-there devs, specifically working on swift coding.

Ah, this would be fantastic.  I’m not sure exactly what the right approach is, but if you haven’t seen it, Slava wrote some phenomenal blog posts about the inner workings of the Swift type system:
https://medium.com/@slavapestov/the-secret-life-of-types-in-swift-ff83c3c000a5#.utgtukjwf

-Chris