4 ms·

Came here to post the same. We tend to spin around the shinny and new. These numbers, even if a but inaccurate, are sobering and show who's really running the

• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• josephg 5y ago
  If even Apple is writing more new software in Obj-C than they are in swift, its probably still a fantastic time to learn obj-c and use it to develop applications. Or at the very least, use Swift + UIKit rather than SwiftUI.
  • jollybean 5y ago
    I think this the wrong take from the data. Apple is writing 'more Obj-C' because it's their incumbent language, and they are 'writing a lot more software'. As the basis expands, it's going to expand along the normative vector, which is ObjC. But for outside devs, Apple has almost frozen ObjC in favour of Swift, and Swift is 100% the future for apps built for iOS/MacOS. Even externally, ObjC will probably be supported for a 'very long time' and maybe even perpetually at this point, it's really not the future. Internally, the sands have not shifted, but I suggest that within about 5-7 years Swift will be on even footing with ObjC even within Apple. So if you're an Apple focused Dev. not working for Apple ... then Swift is probably your #1 focus with a 'Healthy Knowledge' of ObjC - at least enough to access arcane and un-ported APIs as a nice thing to round out your skills. ObjC is losing popularity, it will be a 'well supported' niche language going forward. You can probably bank on your ObjC skills for a long time to come, but in a more narrow range of opportunities.
    • gurkendoktor 5y ago
      > But for outside devs, Apple has almost frozen ObjC in favour of Swift In my experience, Apple doesn't even have to freeze anything because the iOS developer community (outside of Apple) is full of proud Early Adopters. Sometimes it feels like a race to use the latest tools on day one. I haven't seen anyone looking for ObjC developers from the day Swift was announced.
• jollybean 5y ago
  It's not 'who's running the show' it's just 'incumbency of legacy'. Modules that are complicated and not broken, are extremely expensive to fix esp. when they need to develop new stuff. Legacy and backwards compatibility have a way of keeping things around.
  • tambourine_man 5y ago
    Have you seen the graphs? From what I’ve gathered, the amount of ObjC has been steadily increasing. It’s not in maintenance legacy mode. It’s thriving.
    • jollybean 5y ago
      Nobody is going to do a 'new start' in Obj-C outside of Apple so it's now a language used for 'One Companies Internal Purposes', moreover, swift in just the last 2 releases has gained significantly - they're just starting to use it. My bet is that even then, most ObjC use is due to legacy - most of those binaries are probably related to apps that are already in ObjC. I looks like they plan to keep it around for the foreseeable future, but I wonder if it will mostly be eventually replaced by Swift for new starts.
      • jollybean 5y ago
        ObjectiveC is slowly dying [1] I think it will flatten out and not go away for a long time but it's going to eventually become and adjunct to Swift 'outside' of Apple. Within 5-7 years Swift will rival ObjC within Apple, and from then on it's hard to tell. There are no foreseeable plans to rewrite the OS, and so ObjC has to stay around, but that's in a clearly limited capacity. [1] https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-languages-by-github-users/ https://www.benfrederickson.com/ranking-programming-language...
        • pjmlp 5y ago
          They better rewrite Metal by then than.
• ksec 5y ago
  Every year the supporter of Swift will claim new project are all going to be Swift right down to system level. And every year they have been wrong. It doesn't seems Swift is replacing Object-C in system level usage anytime soon. And only even partly in applications. May be Swift 6, when they finally introduce ownership. But that is looking more like 2023 at the earliest. It will be worth looking at the stats again in 2024, 10 years after Swift was introduced.