What's Going Down at the TIOBE Index? Swift, Surprisingly
Last month I expressed my surprise at the fact that Objective-C was recovering its rankings in the TIOBE index, not quite
to the lofty #3 spot it enjoyed a while ago, but to a solid 10, once again surpassing Swift, which had dropped to #17.
This month, Swift has dropped to #19 almost looking like it's going to fall out of the top 20 altogether.
Here's a hypothesis to explore: programming language searches are skewed toward inexperienced users of the language, and people coming to the Apple platforms are mostly learning Swift. So when they get a job at a company that's already got some ObjC code, they need to search to find out how it works, therefore the "popularity" of ObjC as measured by searches goes up.
Mostly nonsense Graham. Posting anonymously because I work at a company that's invested in Swift, and don't want to rile feathers. But suffice to say, I am hopeful to return to using Objective-C in future gigs. It's a trend I see amongst my peers of similar experience levels as I have (7-11 years on iOS, largely). Swift 1.1 held a lot of promise, and then it was taken over by the community, and nonsensical changes have been made time and again to the language leading to a good chunk of us, many of us with language design experience, feeling like Swift is heading in the wrong direction, and ultimately will become too clunky/cumbersome to use in the day to day. Objective-C for all its problems, isn't trying to solve all the world's problems, it's simply a tool for writing apps.
That's an unfortunate position to take, Anonymous. As an educator of both languages, I see many enterprises requesting classes in both, but far more in Swift. Those that request Objective-C based classes are the enormous overwrought ones with tons of legacy code that they need to continue to maintain. Swift has plenty of faults, and I'm kinda in the camp that the community is doing bad things to it. Objective-C will always have a place of love in my heart. But trying to return to Objective-C as a primary language just won't work long term. It's like decrying Auto Layout: a move that that would mean a future of fighting the tools - and Apple - at every step.
TIOBE index is a terrible way to rank languages. It rewards languages that have huge installed bases. In terms of starting new projects, very few people are selecting ObjectiveC as Apple has made it abundantly clear that Swift if their future horse they will be riding. Apple gets its way always in the end, and just like Objective Pascal, Objective C is doomed.
hmm...."rewarding languages that have huge installed bases" is kind of the point of the TIOBE index...
I agree that Apple has tethered themselves very strongly to Swift and is unlikely to back down no matter how detrimental to the ecosystem. On the other hand, remember the PPC/Intel bakeoffs? Or garbage collection, YB/Windows, modern syntax, Cocoa/Java (we had at least one whole WWDC that was almost exclusively Cocoa/Java), ...
Here's a hypothesis to explore: programming language searches are skewed toward inexperienced users of the language, and people coming to the Apple platforms are mostly learning Swift. So when they get a job at a company that's already got some ObjC code, they need to search to find out how it works, therefore the "popularity" of ObjC as measured by searches goes up.
ReplyDeleteMostly nonsense Graham. Posting anonymously because I work at a company that's invested in Swift, and don't want to rile feathers. But suffice to say, I am hopeful to return to using Objective-C in future gigs. It's a trend I see amongst my peers of similar experience levels as I have (7-11 years on iOS, largely). Swift 1.1 held a lot of promise, and then it was taken over by the community, and nonsensical changes have been made time and again to the language leading to a good chunk of us, many of us with language design experience, feeling like Swift is heading in the wrong direction, and ultimately will become too clunky/cumbersome to use in the day to day. Objective-C for all its problems, isn't trying to solve all the world's problems, it's simply a tool for writing apps.
ReplyDeleteThat's an unfortunate position to take, Anonymous. As an educator of both languages, I see many enterprises requesting classes in both, but far more in Swift. Those that request Objective-C based classes are the enormous overwrought ones with tons of legacy code that they need to continue to maintain. Swift has plenty of faults, and I'm kinda in the camp that the community is doing bad things to it. Objective-C will always have a place of love in my heart. But trying to return to Objective-C as a primary language just won't work long term. It's like decrying Auto Layout: a move that that would mean a future of fighting the tools - and Apple - at every step.
ReplyDeleteThis says way more about the TIOBE Index than it does about Swift
ReplyDeleteTIOBE index is a terrible way to rank languages. It rewards languages that have huge installed bases. In terms of starting new projects, very few people are selecting ObjectiveC as Apple has made it abundantly clear that Swift if their future horse they will be riding. Apple gets its way always in the end, and just like Objective Pascal, Objective C is doomed.
ReplyDeleteHello @CodingFiend,
ReplyDeletehmm...."rewarding languages that have huge installed bases" is kind of the point of the TIOBE index...
I agree that Apple has tethered themselves very strongly to Swift and is unlikely to back down no matter how detrimental to the ecosystem. On the other hand, remember the PPC/Intel bakeoffs? Or garbage collection, YB/Windows, modern syntax, Cocoa/Java (we had at least one whole WWDC that was almost exclusively Cocoa/Java), ...
Thank you so much for sharing such an intresting blog with us.
ReplyDelete