After Apple introduced its Swift programming language, developers began turning away from Objective-C. However, now that shift is finally being reflected in the Tiobe programming language popularity index, according to ZDNet.
Touted as safe, fast, and expressive, Swift appeals to developers who are aiming to build on Apple’s multiple platforms, such as macOS, iOS, and watchOS. It became “open source” in 2015.
Tiobe uses queries on several search engines to come up with its ratings, which place Java, C, and Python in the top three programming languages. The rankings roughly line up with other popularity indexes, such as PYPL, which is based on the volume of Google searches for language tutorials. PYPL’s top three is Python, Java and JavaScript. Swift comes in number nine on the list. IEEE Spectrum’s top three is Python, Java, and C. Swift also comes in at number nine on this list.