Objective-C plummets in popularity, impacted by rise of Swift Longtime staple of development for Apple platforms slides out of the top 20 in Tiobe Index of programming language popularity Credit: Dreamstime Objective-C, which has been a staple of software development for Apple platforms, slumped in this month’s Tiobe Index of programming language popularity, falling out of the top 20 for the first time since late-2009. Objective-C ranked 23rd in Tiobe’s April index with a rating of 0.67 per cent. It had entered the top 20 in October 2009 and earned Tiobe’s language of the year honours (given to the language with the most growth in popularity) in 2011 and 2012. Objective-C placed 20th in last month’s index, with a rating of 0.91 per cent.