In an attempt to make itself more appealing to developers, Google is reportedly adding support for Apple’s popular Swift programming language to its mysterious new operating system, “Fuchsia.”

In development since last year at least, the open-source Fuchsia could serve as a replacement for Chrome OS and Android. It is being developed with a brand new OS and kernel that will be optimized for embedded devices such as car dashboards and GPS units, as well as smartphones and PCs.

Swift was introduced by Apple in 2014 as a replacement for Apple’s previous native mobile app development language, Objective-C. The streamlined language makes it easier for coders to build apps by offering simple language and familiar syntax.

Despite being (until now) limited to Apple devices and computers, Swift has rapidly become one of the world’s most popular programming languages. In November 2017’sTIOBE Index, which ranks the popularity of programming languages, Swift cracked the top 20 languages — an impressive achievement for something so new.

Apple used its marketing power to promote the language. The company launched a Swift coding curriculum taught in colleges around the world.

In addition to Swift, Fuchsia apps will also support Dart, a C-like language developed by Google, as well as other existing languages like C/C++ and Go.

If Fuchsia winds up becoming as popular as Android, or even more thanks to its use in devices like the Chromecast and Google Home, today’s news could be very good for Swift adoption around the globe.

Even if, right now, there’s no word on when Fuchsia will actually arrive.

Source: Android Police