In the world of iOS development, Swift is on the rise. But what about Objective-C? Is ObjC still relevant? Are Objective-C fans clinging onto a band that broke up 20 years ago?

My take: Objective-C is not going away anytime soon. But if you’re just starting iOS development, learn Swift.

Objective-C is so pervasive in iOS that it’s impossible to completely remove it. Apple continues to maintain libraries written in Objective-C, so we should expect Objective-C to be treated as a (mostly) first class language in iOS.

At other companies, legacy code remains. Some of Google’s iOS apps are completely written in Objective-C.

Further proof that there are still opportunities for diehard Objective-C fans: StackOverflow conducted a survey in February 2020. On average, Objective-C developers make more money than Swift developers ($64k vs $58k).

But for new apps, Swift is the future. I bet a Swift developer could outpace someone writing in Objective-C. Furthermore, features like SwiftUI are exclusively for the new kids.

If I was building an app from scratch, I would choose Swift.