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Comment by danielamitay | Hacker News Reader

Stats on popularity from TIOBE:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... (Obj-C now the 5th most popular and quickly rising)

I always wondered if that popularity is tied to Apple devices. I mean... are there projects using Obj-C out of an Apple context?

Other sources:

http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/ https://github.com/languages

Or, the best of them all: http://langpop.com

Unfortunately this hasn't been updated in almost a year.

I keep hoping someone will buy the thing from me. It's been fun to run it, and I think the metrics are a lot better than TIOBE's, but I just don't have the time any more.

> are there projects using Obj-C out of an Apple context?

It's the same as 12 years ago: just GNUStep and things in the GNUStep halo like Étoilé. Sony started a project to put GNUStep on mobile (SNAP) a few years ago and promptly dropped it.

> I always wondered if that popularity is tied to Apple devices.

There's no doubt about that.

SNAP was a very strange story. I tried to google what happened and on 25 Nov 2010 all reported "big news: Sony is using Obj-C with GNUstep!" and two days later on the 27th "Sony killed SNAP!"

http://blog.deliciousrobots.com/2010/11/27/sonys-changes-to-...

The word on the street was that they got skittish about stepping on Apple's IP. Which is a shame, because GNUStep doesn't get nearly enough attention.

My friend worked for a big bank for nearly ten years in Obj-C (using NeXTStep and OpenStep) - and quit when they moved to Java a couple of years ago.

That would have to be Credit Suisse.

Yup ;-)

Not an organic growth though.

define organic. In nature things grow quickly, sometimes exponentially all the time.

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