Language · 2014–now · Cloud Scale
Swift
Apple's successor to Objective-C. The price of admission to serious iOS and macOS development.
Why Swift stuck
Swift stuck because Apple mandates the ecosystem and the language finally feels modern. ABI stability and SwiftUI pushed adoption past the ObjC holdouts. It will live as long as the App Store does.
Compare with
Related
Language · 1984–now
Objective-C
The language of the iPhone era — brackets, message sends, and a decade of App Store gravity before Swift.
Language · 2011–now
Kotlin
Java without the boilerplate ceremony. Google's Android pick and Spring's polite nod kept it climbing.
Framework · 2015–now
React Native
React components on native views. Share logic with web until platform differences ruin your sprint.
Practice · 2010–now
Mobile-first / Responsive
Design for the small screen first. Became table stakes, not a differentiator.