14 DAY TRIAL // RedMonk, the first and only developer-focused industry analyst firm, has released the results of its Programming Language Rankings revealing that Apple’s newly-launched Swift programming language has jumped a whopping 46 positions since mid-2014.
Announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference and released to developers soon thereafter, Swift is a new programming language from Apple that aims to become the de facto tool for coding iOS and Mac Apps. And by the looks of it, that goal is being fulfilled sooner than many would have expected.
Nabs the 22nd spot in mere months
Pitted against dozens of languages, Swift quickly made its way from the 68th position in Q3 2014 to the 22nd spot this quarter. Swift leapfrogged 46 spots in a matter of months, making it one of the fastest growing programming languages ever to have been released.
And as far as RedMonk was concerned, this kind of thing has never happened under their watch, “the growth that Swift experienced is essentially unprecedented in the history of these rankings,” said the company. “Given this dramatic ascension, it seems reasonable to expect that the Q3 rankings this year will see Swift as a Top 20 language,” the analytics firm added.
Our take
There are at least two reasons that we can identify with certainty as being directly responsible for Swift’s meteoric rise in RedMonk’s rankings. The first (and the most obvious one) is Apple’s name. Suffice to say that any new Apple product will have a very hard time failing in its first months, mainly thanks to the brand.
The second reason is that both iOS and OS X developers have every reason to use Swift. Needless to point out, the sheer number of iOS developers on hand today is unimaginably high.