Last week Redmonk updated their Programming Language Rankings for the third quarter of 2018. I thought this could be a good moment to look back at the last four years of Swift, from when it was first released in 2014 to today.

I’ve put together an animation of Swift’s progress, using Redmonk’s six-monthly rankings, with other languages removed to be able to focus in on Swift. I‘ve included Objective-C for comparison.

The most impressive jump in popularity was clearly between Q3 2014 to Q1 2015. You can check out Redmonk’s original and most recent ranking chart for all languages here.

It’s interesting — if you were looking at merely the numerical rankings— Objective-C is tied for 9th and Swift is ranked 11 — you would be forgiven for guessing that the two were further apart, but as you can see in the chart, after Swift’s “unprecendented growth trajectory”, Swift and Objective-C are pretty much on top of eachother these days. Also, the difference of two is an illusion — as there was a tie for 9th, there was no 10th. As Redmonk note: “This may seem consequential, but the reality is that the difference in their collective rankings, while measurable, is slight.”

Who knows where Swift will go from here? Will it usurp its predecessor and hold position in the top 10? Either way, it’s clear that Swift is here to stay — here’s Redmonk again: “While it has yet to break in to the Top 10 and stay there, Swift’s adoption and usage remains robust.”

If you’re interested in exploring Swift, I’ve put together a free book for you!

Click here to check it out.

“Exploring Swift” contains three sampler chapters from three Swift books from Manning Publications: