[swift-users] Fwd: Swift and Xcode along with Playgrounds is full of bugs

[Shyamal Chandra]

Hi Tim,

Hope you are doing well!

The quality of response time and stability of Xcode Playgrounds is
questionable.  Also, the support and forum response time are not adequate.
Could you please open-source Xcode Playgrounds so I can look at the source
code to fix the problems or provide better documentation for the
XCPlayground library which has sparse documentation on the web and on the
Apple website?

Thanks!

Best,

Shyamal Chandra
shyamalc at gmail.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/shyamalc
Phone: 620-719-9064

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shyamal Chandra <shyamalc at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 11:50 PM
Subject: Re: [swift-users] Swift and Xcode along with Playgrounds is full
of bugs
To: Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com>
Cc: Shyamal Chandra via swift-users <swift-users at swift.org>


Hi Chris,

First of all, there is tremendous instability with Xcode Playgrounds.  I
paste the same simple code into Xcode Playgrounds; sometimes, it works and
sometimes, it doesn't work.  Why don't you make the Playgrounds open source
so I can investigate?  You should tell this to Tim Cook as soon as
possible.  I wanted to add Swift to the list of languages in Juypter for
workbook usage.  If a project is closed-source, I cannot do anything
without looking at documented code.  The documentation for Xcode
Playgrounds is not there.  For the XCPlayground library, there is just an
API call reference that is sparsely documented.   I can wait for infinity
for a response on the forums but Apple should provide better support rather
than charging money for each technical support call.  This is disappointing
since Apple was founded to make computing easy, not hard on purpose, making
code writing a black art.

Thanks!

Best,

Shyamal Chandra
shyamalc at gmail.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/shyamalc
Phone: 620-719-9064

On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:

> On Sep 13, 2016, at 5:34 PM, Shyamal Chandra <shyamalc at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> Here is a forum question that I posted a while back.  The latest post says
> to file a bug under the bug report.
>
>
> Here's the post:
>
> https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/61953 (Playgrounds error)
>
>
> Thanks for the link.  Contrary to your claims, it appears that you
> promptly got a response from an Apple employee, and it appears that you
> didn’t follow his instructions to file a radar in bugreporter.apple.com.
>
> Now that Xcode 8 has shipped to the Mac App Store today, I’d suggest you
> download that and try it.  There are a number of bugs that are fixed
> between beta 6 and the final release, and that may include this one.
>
> I was doing something "simple" in Playgrounds and my version of
> Playgrounds doesn't function properly because it is emitting an error when
> I write bug-free code.  Why is Playgrounds so flaky?  Sometimes, it shows
> the output on the right side; sometime, it doesn’t.
>
>
> Two simple and obvious answers come to mind: you are running
> advertised-as-beta software, and even shipping software does have bugs.
>
> I have had mixed success with the bug reporter tool from Apple; most of
> the time, they ask for the system diagnostics and then, tell you to update
> your version.  Sometimes, they just close the issue and nothing happens.
>
>
> I understand that you claim to have had problems with Radar/
> bugreporter.apple.com, but again I can see no evidence of you ever filing
> a bug in it (and you haven’t provided me any radar numbers to cross
> reference), so there isn’t much I can do to help you.  Needless to say, we
> do actually need the system diagnostics in order to reproduce issues like
> this, as you found on the forum, your issue doesn’t reproduce trivially for
> other folks.
>
>
> Finally, as others have pointed out, your approach on this thread hasn’t
> been particularly constructive.  Despite your apparent expectation, Apple
> has not signed up to fix any and every bug reported against Swift.  That
> said, we all want to build a strong community, and if you are interested in
> working in a helpful and productive way we would love for you to be part of
> that community.  On the other hand, if you find that Swift on Linux isn’t
> ready for you today and that you don’t want to invest effort in it, then
> perhaps it is best for you to come back at some point later in the future.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Chris
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Best,
>
> Shyamal Chandra
> shyamalc at gmail.com
> Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/shyamalc
> Phone: 620-719-9064
>
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 7:02 PM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 12, 2016, at 3:03 PM, Shyamal Chandra via swift-users <
>> swift-users at swift.org> wrote:
>> > Hope you are doing well!
>> >
>> > Swift is very volatile language that keeps on changing with every new
>> version of Xcode.  When you are trying to run old code with different
>> syntax, you run into problems because the code is no longer compatible.
>> Instead of moving onto Swift 3, 4, and 5 (with different syntax), why don't
>> you standardize the library and language operations and functions for the
>> different package and frameworks included with Xcode
>>
>> The subject line of this message seems like it is intended to be
>> provocative, not helpful.
>>
>> Despite that, you’ll be happy to know that the goal of Swift 4 is to be
>> source compatible with Swift 3, so the concerns that you are complaining
>> about are historic, not future problems.
>>
>> > because I have already submitted multiple bugs to the bug report that
>> are with the official release of Xcode and I am very disappointed with the
>> software quality.
>>
>> I don’t see any radars filed by you in the system, but perhaps they are
>> just under a different name.  In any case, thank you for filing bugs, we do
>> read and care about them!  Please send me the radar numbers (off list if
>> you prefer) and I’ll take a look.
>>
>> -Chris
>>
>>
>
>
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