Imagine you go to the homepage of your favorite source for Apple developer news, os26Insider, and above the fold here's all you see:

os26Insider is the up to date, best researched, authentic source of os26 news and information.

Below that is a subscribe button.

Across the top are categories: "New Technologies", "Liquid Glass", "iOS", "iPadOS", "macOS", "watchOS", and "tvOS" with links to pages with more information, stories, and further links.

You'd never click through.

When you visit actual sites such as Apple Insider or MacRumors you are able to scan the latest stories and decide whether to click to learn more. Each of these stories also includes links to other stories you might be interested in.

Each of the sites also contain links to various aggregate pages and specific themes - but the home page is vibrant and engaging and contains items that may or may not interest you. Without clicking or navigating, you generally get what you came for.

Contrast this with the swift.org homepage.

I appreciate the time and work that has gone into the redesign. It is attractive and the site contains a ton of useful content both on the site and in linked sites such as the forums, blog, and Swift Package Index.

I don't know who the site is for and I don't know what I am supposed to do when I get to the site.

Again, I am not criticizing the work and vision of the people who built the site - but I helped build and run a site for a programming language and it was very successful.

It almost wasn't.

The week before we launched java.net, Sun presented us with a page much like the swift.org homepage that would be the landing page. They explained that people would click through to our page but Sun would own the home page.

We successfully argued against this and Sun agreed to let us own the java.net home page and they generally didn't get involved in what we presented there.

That is essential if you are building a site for the community.

One of Apple's biggest challenges is that Swift is seen as an Apple language for Apple platforms.

Swift is more than that but Apple needs to make some changes if it wants to change this perception.

Not to get sidetracked, but here's a link to an excerpt of a previous post that argues for an independent Swift Foundation funded by Apple that would run swift.org and a fall Swift conference.

I would argue that Apple has been a great steward of Swift and is bringing the language to other platforms and doing great things with the language.

The swift.org web site must reflect this. Adding Linux and Windows references to the home page isn't enough. In addition, Apple marketing can't be any where near the website. There needs to be an independent editorial team that is responsible for the home page.

Here's what I'd like to see on a front page that is refreshed many times a week to highlight that Swift is part of a vibrant ecosystem..

At the top there would still be links to "Getting Started", "Install", and perhaps some or all of the existing links. The body of the site would include some subset of the following (different days might include different items).

(1) A curated list of excerpts from active Forum discussions. The forums are excellent but many people aren't following them, don't have the bandwidth to follow them, or are following just the threads that interest them. This would be a chance for people to glance over recent posts and decide that maybe a thread they didn't even know existed is something they are interested in.

(2) A featured Swift Package that updates once or twice a week. The Swift Package Index is amazing, but again many people don't know to visit it. There might be a Swift Package that they see on the homepage that gets them more interested in this resource.

(3) Future directions that highlights Swift Evolution proposals, pre-proposals, and vision documents. We're so busy that new proposals go by so fast and we don't notice weak let, inline arrays, or the updates to observation.

(4) News items from the world of Swift. An article on some aspect of the language, a new book, a relevant conference, a video, ... there are always things happening. This is another reason Apple can't own this page and apple marketing can't be anywhere near this page. The links are not sanctioning or approving the content - they're just pointing to it and making sure people understand Swift is a vibrant language with innovation happening in so many places.

(5) Recent Swift.org blog posts (we'd also build a calendar so there are more of them).

(6) A daily quick note from the editor highlighting something new on the site each day.

(7) Commissioned articles on topics

(8) Searchable archives of previous homepages.

(9) A swift.org podcast which includes quick interviews with core team members and community members about recent and upcoming changes in Swift and how it might impact them. For instance a quick conversation with Holly Borla on her vision for Swift Concurrency and/or a conversation with Matt Massicote on top questions he fields from the community on concurrency adoption.

(10) Notes for Newbies and for those on the cutting edge who want to install toolchains or peak behind feature flags.

(11) Swift snippets could be quick 1-2 minute video showing code before and after we make a small change to incorporate a Swift feature many might not yet be using.

(12) Perhaps some coding challenge with a link to a page with a live playground environment like our own programming equivalent of a wordle or mini crossword.

So many of us are in our own little corner of Swift and may not know about embedded Swift or Swift on the Server. This page is a daily launch page for Swift. It is mainly links to existing content but it can be a great service to the community.

I'm not sure if it's at all possible as the site would be expensive to run and would require a financial commitment from Apple without allowing them editorial oversight or control.

In any case, I wanted to share a vision for a different sort of swift.org. I want it to look more like the now defunct java.net and less like what currently lives on java.com.