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Hacker Trends › scala vs swift vs kotlin

scala vs swift vs kotlin on Hacker News

Across 2007–2026 of Hacker News, swift leads scala vs swift vs kotlin with 61,108 mentions to scala’s 49,107, peaking in May 2014.

Mention-over-time for scala vs swift vs kotlin, overlaid across 2007–2026 of Hacker News. Each line is a live date-histogram over ~45M posts and comments, computed with Upstash Redis Search.

scala49,107 mentions, peak Nov 2013swift61,108 mentions, peak May 2014kotlin25,882 mentions, peak Apr 2017
2008201120142017202020232026
Open this comparison in the interactive tool — zoom to any date range and read the stories behind each spike →

How the lead changed hands

A three-way relay across the JVM/mobile era: Scala is the hot language ~2011, Swift grabs the baton with iOS mid-decade, then Kotlin overtakes both as Android goes Kotlin-first.

The stories behind each line

Top “scala” stories
  1. Comparing the Same Project in Rust, Haskell, C++, Python, Scala and OCaml 783 points · 2019
  2. Scala 3.0 690 points · 2021
  3. Scala Native v0.1 642 points · 2017
  4. My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community 626 points · 2021
Top “swift” stories
  1. CVE program faces swift end after DHS fails to renew contract [updated] 1,934 points · 2025
  2. Swift is Open Source 1,824 points · 2015
  3. “Swift will be open source later this year” 1,334 points · 2015
  4. Introducing Swift 1,216 points · 2014
Top “kotlin” stories
  1. Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels 690 points · 2025
  2. Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018? 629 points · 2018
  3. Android now supports Kotlin 620 points · 2017
  4. Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption) 551 points · 2024

Each term on its own

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