iPhone Coding Language Now World’s Third Most Popular

Backed by Apple, Objective-C is now the third most popular programming language on the planet.
Photo: BENM.AT Live Coverage/Flickr

Objective-C — the programming language used to build applications for the Apple iPhone and iPad — is now the third most popular language on Earth, according to a new study.

Moving into the third spot in the oft-cited TIOBE index, Objective-C has surpassed C++, another derivative of the venerable C programming language.

C itself is still at the top of the list, followed by Java.

Just a year ago, Objective-C was ranked 46th on TIOBE’s list, and its sudden rise is all about Apple. “This is less about Objective-C and more about the success of the Apple ecosystem,” says Nolan Wright, the technology chief at Appcelerator, an outfit offering a development tool that spans various languages and platforms. “Objective-C is enjoying that benefit. If it had been another language [on the Apple platform], it would have enjoyed that too.”

Programming language popularity (click to enlarge). Credit: TIOBE Software

Apple settled on Objective-C because it was the language of choice on the NeXTSTEP operating system, which was developed by Steve Jobs and his NeXT Inc. in the mid-1980s and later became the basis for Apple’s Mac OS X operating system as well as iOS, the operating system that drives the iPhone and the iPad.

Originally developed in early ’80s by two developers at a company called Stepstone — Brad Cox and Tom Love — Objective-C was barely on TIOBE’s radar in the summer of 2008. But then Apple launched the iPhone App Store.

Now, according to the TIOBE Index — which surveys engineers and crawls the web for code — Objective-C accounts for 9.3 percent of the world’s software, while C++ stands at 9.1 percent. And a second survey, the Transparent Language Index, puts Objective-C at 9.2 percent and C++ at 7.9 percent.

Though the Apple App Store is the main reason for the recent rise of the language, Eric Shapiro, technology chief of app developer ArcTouch, also argues that the language is easier to use than most. “Almost anybody can just pick up a book and learn [Objective C] basics,” he tells Wired. “That doesn’t make you an expert, but that does mean that so many more [developers] are familiar.”

There’s still a learning curve, says Appcelerator’s Nolan, but once you climb it, you benefit from, well, Apple. “Apple probably has the most developed developer ecosystem,” he says. “Once people get passed that learning curve, people tend to really enjoy the language.”

But Objective C is unlikely to surpass the popularity of Java anytime soon. Unlike Objective C — which is predominantly used build “front-end” software on devices such as the iPhone — Java is a mainstay on servers running “back-end” software that feed online services to phones, tablets, and PCs. Plus, it’s the language used to build applications on Google’s Android mobile operating system.

Despite the popularity of Apple’s mobile gadgets, Android is the most widely used mobile operating system — at least in the US.

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Open Source Darling GitHub Takes $100M From VC King

GitHub founder and CTO Tom Preston-Werner. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

GitHub — the darling of the software development world that for so many years refused to take a dime of venture capital funding — is taking a serious helping of venture funding: $100 million, to be exact.

The money is coming from Andreessen-Horowitz, the savvy Silicon Valley venture firm started by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. Andreessen-Horowitz is a prestigious outfit that has a reputation for picking winners such as Skype, Twitter, and Facebook.

It’s not exactly surprising that Andreessen-Horowitz would fund a cool company like GitHub. But it’s a bit of an eyebrow-raiser that GitHub agreed to take the cash.

The source-code-management-meets-social-network company had intentionally held off on venture funding for the first four years of its life, and that was one of its strengths, co-founder Tom Preston-Werner told us back in January. Not having investors “makes sure that we optimize for customer happiness,” he said. “Because if we’re not making our customers happy, we have no money. And a big distraction for a lot of startups is that they end up taking a bunch of VC money early and then they lose focus because now they can do anything.”

Clearly GitHub didn’t make that mistake. The company now boasts 1.7 million software developers.

So why did GitHub take the money? According to Preston-Werner, Andreessen and company had been in discussions with his firm since November. It turns out that the VCs think that software development is becoming more important and disruptive than ever, and they believe that GitHub has an important role to play.

“In the future, we’d love to see companies using GitHub using software internally really collaboratively. We’ve created this collaborative software creation model that’s really special,” Preston-Werner says. But that vision will take some money.

GitHub’s version-control software keeps track of changes to coding projects, and makes it really easy for coders to discuss and tinker with software that’s under development. Open-source projects can use it for free, but companies can also pay big money to host their own private versions of GitHub.

GitHub is a mainstay in the open source community, and companies are paying to use it too, but the money will help push the software into new markets and attract users, says Preston-Werner. GitHub has already developed special easy-to-use Mac and Windows clients, but Preston-Werner would like to develop software specifically for Linux and mobile users too. He’d like to see GitHub used by new types of people — not just coders — but designers and technical authors.

Preston-Werner calls this idea “GitHub Everywhere.”

“We want GitHub to work for all kinds of people,” he says. And with $100 million in the bank that job could get easier. “You can be much more creative when you’re not so focused on the money aspect of things.”

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Google Open Sources Coding Kit That Lives Online

Google has open sourced Collide, a tool that lets software developers collaborate on code via their web browsers. Image: Mohamed Mansour

Google doesn’t want Collide, a tool that lets programmers collaborate on coding projects via their web browsers. But you can have it.

Last week, according to a Google+ post from a former Google engineer named Scott Blum, the web giant shut down its Collide project as part of some changes it made in its Atlanta engineering office, but it has given the world at least part of the code behind the tool, launching an open source project on its own Google Code site.

With his post, Blum says that Collide has been under development for about a year. It’s an IDE, or integrated development environment, a tool for building software applications. But unlike traditional IDEs, it runs online, inside a web browser, fostering collaboration among coders and providing access to coding projects from virtually any machine. According to Blum — who left Google when the Atlanta operation was closed — only part of the code behind the tool has been open sourced, but he says this included the meat of the project.

“What we pushed out is extremely stripped down right now, but the most interesting tech stuff around collaborative editing is all there,” he says. “Long term, we hope it will serve as a catalyst for improving the state of web-based IDEs.”

Collide is just one of many tools that take the traditional IDE online in an effort to streamline code development. A startup called Cloud9 offers an online IDE based on the open source Ajax.org Cloud9 Editor, or ACE. Adobe has built an open source code editor called Brackets meant for building applications with standard web development languages, including HTML and Javascript. And the Eclipse project offers an open source tool called Orion, designed for those using the Java programming language.

Scott Blum. Image: Scott Blum

Using the code released by Google, you can set up your own online collaborative coding service. The code runs on a server, and then, when collaborating, individual developers tap into that server via their web browsers.

According to a post from a Microsoft engineer named Mohamed Mansour — who is already offering up a Collide service — Collide is built atop protocols originally designed for Google Wave, a failed Google project that was meant to replace email and instant messaging with a new breed of online communication.

Mansour praises Collide not because it allows for collaboration but because it gives you access to your latest development project from any machine you happen to be on. “The beauty of this is to do remote development/compilation/debugging,” he writes. “So if you’re on a cloud device like a Chromebook, tablets, or any remote location, you can still do partial work. It is still early, but if the development is active, this would be one promising tool for any developer. I know there are alternatives, but this is free and fully self hosted.”

Scott Blum was not immediately available for comment.

In his Google+ post, Blum said that Google has shut down its entire Atlanta engineering operation, but a Google spokesman tell us this is not the case, saying that the company still employees engineers in its Atlanta office. He says that the employee leading the operation left the web giant to set up his own company and that Google has “also made some internal changes on the technical side.”

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You’ve Seen the Lego Data Center. Now Witness the Data Center Legos

It’s not easy working in a data center: long hours, difficult problems, everyone blames you when things go wrong. But there’s no reason why you can’t have a little fun while you’re there, especially if you’re a Lego fan.

Last week, we brought you the data center made of Lego. Now here’s a look at the critical Lego gear you need in your real-world data center (see images above).

We’ve got Lego servers and Lego USB hubs — but we’ve also got the serious stuff, like Lego boom boxes and Lego Bat Phones. If you’ve ever worked in a data center, you know that all this is absolutely essential. Kinda.

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Cisco Rethinks ‘Cloud’ Service After Customer Outcry

Cisco has adjusted its approach to a “cloud service” that ties into its home routers, responding to an outcry from customers.

With a blog post, the company now says that it will change the settings on two of its home wireless routers — the EA4500 and the EA2700 — so that they no longer default to the company’s Cloud Connect service, a way for customers to manage their routers over the net.

Last month, the company updated embedded software on the two routers so that users were automatically shuttled to Cloud Connect — as opposed to local software — when they tried to manage the devices. Some users objected because the tool’s terms of service seemed to step on not only their privacy, but their right to look at porn on the internet.

This little tempest in a teacup was a nice metaphor for Cisco’s efforts to stay relevant in the age of cloud computing.

In late June, the company told users they were free to move their routers to an earlier version of the embedded software, or firmware, so that they wouldn’t default to Cloud Connect. But it has now gone further, changing the setting on the routers so that they default to local management software even without a firmware change.

“We believe lack of clarity in our own terms of service has contributed to many of our customers’ concerns, and we apologize for the confusion and inconvenience this has caused,” reads a blog post from Brett Wingo, Cisco’s vice president of networking. “We take responsibility for that lack of clarity, and we are taking steps to make this right.”

Wingo says that although the routers pushed users to Cloud Connect, they always could always opt out of the service. And he says that Cisco Connect Cloud and its routers “do not monitor or store information about how our customers are using the Internet,” that the company does not arbitrarily disconnect customers from the internet, and that the Connect Cloud service has “never monitored customers’ Internet usage, nor was it designed to do so.”

According to Wingo, Cisco will soon update its terms of service to make all of this clear.

Image: Flickr/camknows

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