

Ask HN: Do sales figures for Objective C books mean the language is getting more popular? - firebug

I was looking at O'Reilly's data:
http://radar.oreilly.com/assets_c/2009/02/TM_qtr_py_Prog_Lang.html<p>Made me wonder what kinds of commercial applications Objective C is being used for? Is this the language you use to create iphone apps?
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jdg
Yes, it is the language used to create iPhone applications.

Yes, the language is probably becoming more popular as more developers learn
it, in order to create iPhone applications.

Since iPhone applications are still relatively new, and haven't hit their
stride yet, book sales will increase rather than staying steady.

Ruby on the other hand has been "popular" for at least two years now, and it's
natural to see a "decline" in book sales, even though the number of developers
entering the ruby world may remain the same.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Ruby is relatively easy to pick-up and
run with, while Objective-C is, uh, a bit more "complex" (for lack of a better
word).

~~~
siong1987
There are too many publishers publishing books about Ruby. The market is
really very competitive. But, you hardly see many ObjC books in the market
right now. This may be the reason why ObjC book sale increases.

If you are using Ruby, you don't have to worry about memory management at all.
But, if you are using ObjC, you have to worry about memory management
especially if you are developing iphone application.(only iPhone doesn't have
GC.)

Anyway, a GCC compiler can actually compile objC, so, it is not actually a
Apple only language. Basically, any linux system with GCC compiler can compile
objC too.

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firebug
I'll add a comment so you can click on the link:

[http://radar.oreilly.com/assets_c/2009/02/TM_qtr_py_Prog_Lan...](http://radar.oreilly.com/assets_c/2009/02/TM_qtr_py_Prog_Lang.html)

~~~
firebug
Also, why is Ruby seeing such a steep decline (-51%)? Does that correspond to
the state of the Ruby contracting market? On the other hand, I wouldn't have
expected to see such an increase in the popularity of Actionscript. Any
theories on what's driving that?

~~~
TJensen
Enterprise flex development would be driving ActionScript. I agree with what
jdg said about Ruby books.

~~~
firebug
Is Flex really such a big deal? I was under the impression that it hadn't
really taken off?

~~~
TJensen
I would say that it is taking off. Now that BlazeDS is open source, there is
less of a barrier to adoption.

