Can you share some credible sources on "schools banning calculus"? Googling seems to primarily show up Quora and indeed HN discussions, and no actual policy proposal or news article.
As of very recently, the entire stdlib (i.e. "Foundation") is open source and available on all platforms Swift targets. For a while, the Linux builds had a much smaller/limited version of Foundation, but it's fully supported now.
I was looking for something that allows easy access to direct memory, with a syntax thats a little easier to explain than C. Frankly, zig was not actually a real viable option based on that syntax requirement but I still wanted to explore it.
I spent last week (with Opus, of course) porting the xv6-riscv teaching operating system to a bunch of different languages. Zig, Nim, LISP, and Swift.
The improvements in embedded Swift have definitely made it one of the most enjoyable/productive languages to work on the OS. I feel like I can build useful abstractions that wrap raw memory access and make the userland code feel very neat.
On the other hand, the compilation times are SO bad, that I'm really focusing on the Nim port anyway.
I really enjoy the ability to get started quickly with a known idea like “make a single user letterboxd clone” with a system prompt that explains my preferred tech stack. From there it’s relatively easy to start going in and being the tastemaker for the project.
I think people being able to build their own bespoke apps is a huge super power. Unfortunately I don’t think the tools today do a good job of teaching you how to think if you aren’t already a software engineer. Sonnet rarely grasps for an abstraction.
Huge shout out to Small Computer Central/Steven Cousins. I have four or five machines designed by him, with various main boards and backplanes. The parts are all tested working, and the build instructions are comprehensive. It’s a very enjoyable project to go from a pile of parts to connecting to the UART and blinking some LEDs.
If you're in an environment where you're able to use Chrome, you can go to the kebab menu and select "Install Visual Studio Code", which will install and open the workspace as a "Progressive Web App". It will have its own dock/menu bar icon, you can ctrl/cmd-tab to it, and all keyboard shortcuts work natively.
Unfortunately, at least on Mac OS, you can't exit Chrome entirely or the PWA will exit too.