Apple’s Swift is the most loved programming language, new dev survey says

Apple’s Swift programming language hasn’t been around very long, but it’s already caught on in a big way with developers.

So says a new survey conducted by Stack Overflow. The survey sampled 26,086 people from 157 countries. Of the sample, 6,800 identified themselves as full-stack developers, 1,900 as mobile developers, 1,200 as front-end developers, and 12,000 as something else.

Stack Overflow asked respondents what programming languages they’ve developed with over the past year, and what languages they most want to develop with. “By comparing status quo vs. aspiration we can see how developers perceive available programming tools,” Stack Overflow said in its blog.

Swift has been lauded for being easier to learn, for its compatibility with Objective C, and for its speed.

The developers identified Salesforce as the technology they “most dread” working with.

The surveyors point out that the sample probably underrepresents developers in countries like China, Brazil, and Japan, who visit Stack Overflow less than do developers in other non-English speaking countries.