Swift, Apple’s programming language, hasn’t celebrated its fourth birthday yet, but a new report from RedMonk, a developer-focused industry analyst firm, finds that it’s already as popular as its predecessor, the Objective-C language.
Touted as safe, fast, and expressive, Swift appeals to developers who are aiming to build on Apple’s multiple platforms, such as iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS. About four years ago Apple announced that it would replace its “ancient” native mobile app development language Objective-C by its newborn language called Swift.
“Apple’s support for Objective C and the consequent opportunities it created via the iOS platform have kept the language in a high profile role almost as long as we’ve been doing these rankings. Even as Swift grew at an incredible rate, Objective C’s history kept it out in front of its replacement,” says RedMonk. “Eventually, however, the trajectories had to intersect, and this quarter’s run is the first occasion in which this has happened. In a world in which it’s incredibly difficult to break into the Top 25 of language rankings, let alone the Top 10, Swift managed the chore in less than four years. It remains a growth phenomenon, even if its ability to penetrate the server side has not met expectations.”
The firm says the top 10 programing languages are: JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP, C#, C++, CSS, Ruby, C, and Swift/Objective-C (they’re tied for the 10th spot).
