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2011's Fastest Growing Language: Objective-C
mikejuk writes "Every January, it is traditional to compare the state of programming language usage as indicated by the TIOBE index. So what's up and what's down this year? The top language is still Java, but it's slowly falling in the percentages. Objective-C experienced the most growth, followed by C# and C. JavaScript climbed back into the top 10, displacing Ruby. Python and PHP experienced the biggest drops. If you like outside runners, then cheer for Lua and R, which have just entered the top 20. However, I have to wonder why Logo is in the top 20 as well. I know programming education is becoming important, but Logo?"
Objective-C's growth in popularity coincides with the Flurry Analytics study that showed most mobile developers targeting iOS, with support for Android dropping by a third over 2011. C# will probably continue to see increasing interest because of WinRT. Lua is unsurprising because of its popular use in games, and they just released 5.2 last December. What I find most interesting is that plain old C is set to overtake Java.
Of course, if you don't take the Tiobe rankings seriously, than all of this is moot, but I guess it's something to talk about on a Friday.
How is the real story not that C# is 3rd up from 6th!
Objective C is only popular because iOS requires it. It's like reporting that orange jumpsuits are the hot fashion trend in prison.
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Java
C
C#
C++
Objective-C
PHP
(Visual)
Python
Perl
JavaScript
Delphi/Object
Ruby
Lisp
Pascal
Transact-SQL
PL/SQL
Ada
Logo
R
Lua
Interesting. Objective-C up (presumably because of iPhone usage), C# passes C++, and Python in a screaming dive.
The languages that are on the way down suffer from mismanagement. The C++ committee went off into template la-la land years ago, focusing on features used by few and used well by fewer. Python had a "Perl 6" experience - von Rossum pushed the language to Python 3, which is only marginally better, no faster, and incompatible. That seems to have hurt the language's market share.
The languages on the way up are rather similar. They're strongly and explicitly typed, compilable, memory-safe (mostly), and have garbage collection. That describes Java, C#, and Objective-C, and even Delphi. The only exception on the way up is Javascript, which has progressed from being an awful language to a pervasive although mediocre one. Javascript does have the advantage of fast implementations, unlike Perl and Python.
These stats, of course, are based on what people are blithering about on blogs, not what's implemented in them.
I've seen logo used a lot in multi-agent systems research. It just lends itself well to that, with every turtle being an agent.
Tiobe generates the rating by the search results of google/bing, etc. So basically, it's just measuring how many web pages mention a particular language. It does *not* measure the actual usage of the language in applications.
...is obviously because of iOS. More specifically it's because when Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in 1996 he brought with his a lot of NeXTStep tech, including Obj-C. That's why many of the system types have the 'NS' prefix. History lesson aside, it's rather a shame as it's (in my opinion) a rather poor and outdated language. If I'm ever asked by people who aren't familiar with it what it's like I say that it's the anti-sibling to C++. By this I mean that it has the same parentage as C++, but where C++ went down one path, Obj-C took the other. The fact that most well regarded modern languages have more in common with C++ than Obj-C should indicate that they made mistakes in its design. Obj-C's biggest failing is its tendency to fail at runtime rather than during compilation. This is mostly down to its weak type system.
Don't get me wrong, I think C++ is getting pretty creaky too. I'm quite fond of D; in a fantasy world, some big commercial player will start using it and make it popular.
You need to show a bunch of six-year-olds how to program in an hour? Here's LOGO. Here's your turtle. Type FWD 20, watch it move forward. Five minutes later, the kids know all the basic commands. Put a maze in front of them, let them figure it out. Congrats - they're programming with a computer.
LOGO was my first programming language, back on an Apple II with a big honkin 5 1/4" floppy disk drive. It was the eye-opening "OMG these things do more than Oregon Trail?!?!?" moment.
I feel there's a "your mom" joke hidden somewhere.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
As a simple example pretty much every videogame is written in it (C++ usually). On Windows it is almost always Visual C++, in particular because for the 360 that is what you have to use. The PS3 doesn't use VC++, of course, but it does use a C language for processor programming and nVidia's CG for programming the GPU (if you need more fine control than OpenGL ES offers). Go look at any posting for a programmer for a game company, see what language they are asking for.
Now obvious to anyone who's looked around that games are HUGE. Lots and lots of development going towards videogames. It's a large and profitable market.
In terms of pure C, that still reigns supreme in the embedded world and man is there a lot of that going on. we have tons of embedded devices, in things you'd never even think of.
The problem is as you note these guys use the "What are people chattering about," method, as do many people on Slashdot. They think because there's a lot of buzz about something that means it is in heavy use. Not really. There's no buzz about C++ because it is well established, but that doesn't mean it isn't getting used. It means the people using it don't feel the need to go on about it.
StackOverflow is a great general purpose site, but was started by two guys VERY heavy into Microsoft and .Net technologies. As such, the C# guys jumped on it en masse, and so they are significantly over-represented here - there were already a lot of sites discussing Java and it takes time to migrate people over.
Objective-C users really had no other great public forums so StackOverflow quickly became a major hub for Objective-C information.
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