In defence of Objective-C

#1

Post by chubs » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 4:26 AM UTC

In defence of Objective-C
splinter.com.au

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#2

Post by chubs » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 4:29 AM UTC

Is it considered poor form around here to submit your own articles? If so, i'm terribly sorry and will remove, however i feel strongly that a lot of people write off obj-c based on superficial weaknesses, and that it has a lot of strengths that are very underrated, and i wish i'd known a lot of this stuff when i started off in iphone development.

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#3

Post by makecheck » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 4:54 AM UTC

chubs wrote: post #2

Is it considered poor form around here to submit your own articles? If so, i'm terribly sorry and will remove, however i feel strongly that a lot of people write off obj-c based on superficial weaknesses, and that it has a lot of strengths that are very underrated, and i wish i'd known a lot of this stuff when i started off in iphone development.

The guidelines[1] just say to submit something interesting/relevant, and this is. Besides, no one knows better than you where to find your content. :)

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#4

Post by zdw » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 5:09 AM UTC

There’s a philosophy here: user happiness is prioritised over developer happiness.

See also the App Store policies. Apple's priorities tend to be it's users, Apple, then any 3rd party developers. I don't tend to think this is a bad thing...

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#5

Post by plinkplonk » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

If you have worked in smalltalk and C (a somewhat rare combination these days, I must admit) , Objective C is trivially readable.

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#6

Post by Bdennyw » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 5:16 AM UTC

zdw wrote: post #4

There’s a philosophy here: user happiness is prioritised over developer happiness. See also the App Store policies. Apple's priorities tend to be it's users, Apple, then any 3rd party developers. I don't tend to think this is a bad thing...

Make no mistake Apple's priorities are: Apple, Users, Developers.

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#7

Post by philwelch » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 5:24 AM UTC

chubs wrote: post #2

Is it considered poor form around here to submit your own articles? If so, i'm terribly sorry and will remove, however i feel strongly that a lot of people write off obj-c based on superficial weaknesses, and that it has a lot of strengths that are very underrated, and i wish i'd known a lot of this stuff when i started off in iphone development.

I don't know anymore, but traditionally it's quite acceptable. That's why self-posts are in gray text and hard to read--if you have a lot of things to say about a subject, post it to your blog and submit the blog here, don't make a long self-post.

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#8

Post by 5hoom » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 5:24 AM UTC

Does Objective-C really need defending?

After doing a couple of projects with it I've found it to be a really beautiful language from a code formatting point of view.

The whole 'overly verbose' thing is probably just because you are encouraged to give your methods and arguments good descriptive names, and often when you do need short variable names for some maths calculations or something it will be while inside a method block using good old C style anyway.

I don't know, it's flexible, (arguably) attractive and it runs fast.

Yay Objective-C! :)

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#9

Post by chubs » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 5:28 AM UTC

5hoom wrote: post #8

Does Objective-C really need defending? After doing a couple of projects with it I've found it to be a really beautiful language from a code formatting point of view. The whole 'overly verbose' thing is probably just because you are encouraged to give your methods and arguments good descriptive names, and often when you do need short variable names for some maths calculations or something it will be while inside a me…

Wow - this is fantastic! I'm glad i submitted this now, just reading the comments here is very heartening. I was beginning to think i was the only guy in the world who liked obj-c :) (i work in a c#/java predominaated environment where most people troll me about obj-c all day!)

Re: In defence of Objective-C

#10

Post by fbuilesv » Mon, Oct 17, 2011, 5:31 AM UTC

I wonder if I'm the only person that thinks that Xcode is the problem, not ObjC. Having experience with C I feel just fine writing code in Objective-C, but only the thought of trying to use Xcode instead of Emacs is painful.

I'd love to know what Eclipse/VS/NetBeans users think about it, maybe it's easier if you're already used to working inside a huge IDE.