Apple's New Programing Language Swift Is 'Swiftly' Growing

By Kamal Nayan - 16 Jan '15 14:02PM

Apple's new programming language Swift, has skyrocketed since its release last year, suggests a new report.

The new programming language, launched as an alternative to Objective-C is already the 22nd most popular language. The report from analyst firm RedMonk noted that the Swift's new spot is up 46 spots from three months ago.

"Growth like that is "unprecedented" in the firm's four years of ranking programming languages," said RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady.

"When we see dramatic growth from a language it typically has jumped somewhere between five and 10 spots, and the closer the language gets to the Top 20 or within it, the more difficult growth is to come by," he noted.

The rankings have been determined based on a correlation of language discussions on Stack Overflow and language usage on GitHub.

Java and JavaScript remained at the first two spot respectively, followed by PHP, Python, C#, C++, Ruby, CSS, C and Objective-C.

"The most important takeaway is that the language frequently written off for dead and the language sometimes touted as the future have shown sustained growth and traction and remain, according to this measure, the most popular offerings," O'Grady added.