AsyncSequence is quite similar to Combine's publisher (but far from the same...) In this post we'll explore AsyncSequence, what it's used for, and you'll learn about some of the differences compared to Combine. https://www.donnywals.com/understanding-swifts-asyncsequence - ThreadSky

donnywals.bsky.social • 37 days ago

AsyncSequence is quite similar to Combine's publisher (but far from the same...)

In this post we'll explore AsyncSequence, what it's used for, and you'll learn about some of the differences compared to Combine.

https://www.donnywals.com/understanding-swifts-asyncsequence

Comments

glaurent06.bsky.social•37 days ago

Near the beginning you say "While I overall do not think that async/await can or will replace Combine on its own..." and as you wrote this in 2021, I think Combine has been replaced by async/await and async algorithms since then.

donnywals.bsky.social•37 days ago

I’m pretty sure it hasn’t. In fact, I still prefer combine for most of my state observation / manipulation needs.

One thing that afaik hasn’t been fixed is multicasting of async streams, lifecycle management of async for loops is tedious IMO and it’s overall just less complete

glaurent06.bsky.social•36 days ago

Good point. My observation comes from the fact that Combine hasn't had any updates in the past 2 years, while Apple seems to be (slowly) adding features to Swift async that overlap with it.

gitswifty.bsky.social•35 days ago

I think between Observable and the expanding Async APIs the days of Combine are numbered. Especially since Combine is strictly Apple’s and the others are part of Swift itself.

But there are definitely still some holes to patch and features to be added before it can be fully replaced

donnywals.bsky.social•35 days ago

The strange thing is that a lot of these holes have existed for a while now and apple seems to be in no rush to patch them. Observable hasn’t been updated since release and async-algorithms don’t seem to have gained much new stuff either even though there’s plenty of stuff both need

glaurent06.bsky.social•35 days ago

Yes, Apple seems to be fumbling around here, rather than having a clear plan.

gitswifty.bsky.social•35 days ago

True, though to be fair the Swift team has been a bit busy trying to solve concurrency 😅. I wonder if we’ll see some more updates in the next ~year

donnywals.bsky.social•37 days ago

Building API that returns sequences also just doesn’t work that well, we really need some form of type erasure for that (primary associated types would work well if they were supported)

lucasvandongen.dev•36 days ago

Multi casting is such a PITA, you basically need to spin up and manage a stream per listener?

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