The similarity to Rust should scare the hell out of Rust's creators and proponents.
Swift could very well render Rust almost totally irrelevant within the OS X and iOS sphere of software development. If we end up eventually seeing Swift implemented for other platforms, then the chances of Rust's long-term success diminish even more.
Things might have been different had a stable, even if somewhat imperfect, initial version of Rust had been released by now, thus allowing it to gain some adoption and traction.
I hope that the "But Rust isn't targeting those developers!" argument isn't used to try to justify this mistake, as well. Rust is already facing stiff competition from languages like Go, C++11, C++14, Scala and even Java 8.
With the announcement of Swift, Rust's niche and audience are getting smaller, further preventing the widespread adoption that's necessary for a programming language to become truly successful.
Swift could very well render Rust almost totally irrelevant within the OS X and iOS sphere of software development. If we end up eventually seeing Swift implemented for other platforms, then the chances of Rust's long-term success diminish even more.
Things might have been different had a stable, even if somewhat imperfect, initial version of Rust had been released by now, thus allowing it to gain some adoption and traction.
I hope that the "But Rust isn't targeting those developers!" argument isn't used to try to justify this mistake, as well. Rust is already facing stiff competition from languages like Go, C++11, C++14, Scala and even Java 8.
With the announcement of Swift, Rust's niche and audience are getting smaller, further preventing the widespread adoption that's necessary for a programming language to become truly successful.