With Swift's open-source release in December, its meteoric rise since it was first announced in 2014 continues. Before the announcement, Swift's position in the TIOBE index in November 2015 had clibmed up to 15th in the chart, sitting just below Objective-C, Apple's key language for iOS and OSX development. However, Objective-C is several decades old at this point and has not seen any significant adoption outside of Apple's ecosystem. Although it has had some minor changes over the past few years, these changes are likely to have been driven by the nascent Swift in order to provide interoperability.
The subsequent entry in the TIOBE index shows Swift and Objective-C trading places, with Swift moving up to position 14 and Objective-C being demoted to position 15.
By the end of 2016 it is likely that Objective-C will have dropped out of the top twenty list, and Swift is likely to be vying for places in the top half of the table; and it's likely that 2016 will see Swift as being marked TIOBE's language of the year.
Community comments
Slightly less bad
by Cameron Purdy,
Re: Slightly less bad
by Alex Blewitt,
Re: Slightly less bad
by Tim Williams,
Java
by Roland Heimdahl,
Preston
by Preston Berger,
Swift vs Objective-C
by Alina Kem,
Swift vs Objective-C
by Aleksandra Bessalitskykh,
Slightly less bad
by Cameron Purdy,
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Swift just hides some portion of the ugliness of Objective C, which competes with C++ for being the biggest collection of arbitrary language ideas glued together under one name.
Re: Slightly less bad
by Alex Blewitt,
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Bear in mind that whilst Swift has Objective-C interoperability, that's because at the moment the only way to have binary compatibility is to use Objective-C implemented frameworks - and partly, Objective-C is ugly because it inherits all of C's undefined behaviour. Swift has the (potential) ability to avoid the Objective-C runtime in the future, and thus evolve past Objective-C. Thinking of Swift as 'just an Objective-C wrapper' is a dangerous underestimation.
Java
by Roland Heimdahl,
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Java has got 5 % more buzz the last month... That is a lot? Change in methology?
Re: Slightly less bad
by Tim Williams,
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Depends on one's baseline I guess. Compared to Java, I'd say it looks pretty good. Compared to some other equally old languages like Haskell and OCaml, it's not very interesting.
Preston
by Preston Berger,
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There are still many companies out there using Objective-C. With that said, I’ve decided to continue to write SDK’s in Objective-C, because I know that they will be compatible with both Objective-C apps and Swift apps. This is not the case however if we decide to write SDK’s solely in Swift.
If I’m building an application that will have zero possible Objective-C dependencies, then Swift is a sure way to go because of its clean style and easy to learn syntax.
I will reassess this decision in the next year as the next Swift versions are introduced and I can determine that my clients will no longer need Objective-C frameworks. Will be useful to read www.archer-soft.com/en/blog/technology-swift-vs...
Swift vs Objective-C
by Alina Kem,
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There are factors and features, flaws andstrong points before the choice is made.There are different technical reasons to consider. If we are speaking about Swift, we should mention ease of use, safety, dynamic libraries. As for Objective-C, its advantages are: compatability and support,expertise, dynamic, runtime. erminesoft.com/objectivec-vs-swift/
Swift vs Objective-C
by Aleksandra Bessalitskykh,
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Thanks to several key features, Swift has the potential to become an effective programming language for creating immersive, responsive, consumer-facing applications for years to come.
I've found more details here mlsdev.com/blog/51-7-advantages-of-using-swift-...