Apple's Swift rises from 58th in Q3 '14 to 22nd in Q1 '15 in Redmonk's language ranking list that uses Github and Stack Overflow data
The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2015 — With two quarters having passed since our last snapshot, it's time to update our programming language rankings.
Context & Ripple Effects
RedMonk's rankings score languages by pull from two developer-behavior sources — GitHub repositories and Stack Overflow activity — which makes this snapshot an early read on whether Apple's Swift was actually being picked up by working developers, not just announced. A jump from 58th to 22nd within two quarters of the Q3 '14 baseline is unusually fast movement for that list.
First-order effects
- Swift's rapid climb signals that iOS developers were already publishing Swift code and asking Stack Overflow questions about it at scale, giving Apple early evidence its Objective-C replacement had real traction rather than keynote-only interest.
Second-order effects
- The momentum gave Apple cover to take the bigger step of making Swift open source by December 2015, extending it beyond Apple's own platforms — a move that only pays off if outside contributors exist, which this ranking suggests they did.
Third-order effects
- The same measurement lens keeps shaping the league table: RedMonk's later studies show vendor-backed newcomers like TypeScript, Kotlin, and Julia climbing while Go, R, and Scala slip, meaning language standing is now set by community activity on GitHub and Stack Overflow as much as by corporate backing.
The trend: Programming-language adoption is increasingly measured and driven by open developer-community activity on GitHub and Stack Overflow, letting well-supported new languages rise — and fall — far faster than in previous eras.