The State of Developer Ecosystem Survey in 2018

Swift & Objective-C

The Swift and Objective-C questions were only shown to the developers who chose Swift or Objective-C as one of their three primary programming languages.

Swift and Objective-C developers
Swift onlyObjective-C onlySwift and Objective-C
54%30%16%

29% of Swift developers still have most of their codebase in Objective-C.
36% of Objective-C developers have most of their codebase in Swift.

Which Apple platforms do you develop for?
iOS96%macOS28%watchOS11%tvOS8%

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.

Only 88% of Swift developers have an Apple iOS smartphone, while 35% have an Android one. The situation is similar for Objective-C developers: 85% have an Apple iOS smartphone vs 39% using an Android one.

79% of Swift / Objective-C developers work on Mobile applications for a living, while only 9% work on desktop apps. Among those developing Mobile applications just for fun, the gap is smaller with 69% and 15%, respectively.

Which version of Swift do you regularly use?
4.144%439%3.110%37%

This question was only answered by the respondents using Swift as a primary programming language.

Of those not using 4.1 yet, 94% plan to migrate to it soon.

Which unit-testing frameworks do you regularly use, if any?
XCTest63%Quick + Nimble18%KIF3%Kiwi2%Specta2%None4%

Question with checkboxes. Sum of shares may be more than 100%.
This question was only answered by respondents who either write or use unit tests.

Which database engine / framework combination do you use?
CoreData33%SQLite with my own wrapper29%Realm16%Firebase13%YAPDataBase2%Other10%

Sum of shares may exceed 100% because the Swift and Objective-c sections are merged.

Do you use UI tests?
34%Yes66%No
Which dependency manager do you use, if any?
CocoaPods71%Carthage7%None22%
Do you develop with Swift on Linux?
7%24%69%
YesNo, but I plan to in the next 12 monthsNo, and I don't plan to in the next 12 months

This question was only answered by those who use Swift as a primary programming language.

36% of Swift developers have C++ code or libs in their projects, while for Objective-C developers the figure is 60%.

Thank you for your time!
We hope you found our report useful.