It's not a functional language: http://robnapier.net/swift-is-not-functional

Please inform me what Swift's type system has over, say, Java as I don't know of anything and neither does a cursory Google.

The lack of an HTTP server is only an example. Let's see you parse JSON, or stream a Unix socket, or any of countless basic things that even Node includes in its standard lib. Swift doesn't really have much of anything except some types and traits: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Genera...