Swift is an interesting language. I more or less like it and use it about 10% of the time when hacking on personal projects, but I have only written one app in Swift (and SwiftUI.)
One interesting thing is how much Apple has improved the Playgrounds Swift IDE that runs on iPadOS and macOS. The iPad version now has functionality of publishing directly to the Apple Store. You say, probably correctly, that Swift missed the chance to be a generally popular language. Perhaps Playgrounds will increase interest?
"The Objective-C language, AppKit & UIKit frameworks, and Interface Builder have empowered generations of developers. These technologies were built for each other, and will continue to serve us well for a long time to come, but over time new abstractions become necessary. For a while now, you've seen us hard at work defining the next generation of integrated language, frameworks, and tools: Swift, SwiftUI, and Xcode Previews.
Tight integration in a development platform like this requires that all three pieces be designed and evolved together, both driving and driven by one another. Swift result builders were inspired by SwiftUI's compositional structure. SwiftUI's declarative views were enabled by Swift value types. And Xcode Previews was specifically designed for, and enabled by, both. Now, the result is the best development platform that we have ever built. And this year, Swift, SwiftUI, and Xcode all have fantastic updates that take this vision further, and make it even easier for you to build great apps for all of our platforms. And it all starts with Swift."
But you’re right, chances are slim..
