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I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

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Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#41

Post by IPlusOneYou »

praptak wrote: post #2

Meh. I do not program in Objective-C but I think I can provide more reasons for liking the language than the linked article contains :) Reason 1: When you need what C provides, it is right there for you (being a superset of C) Reason 2: When you need what C does not provide (basic reflection, generics, polymorphism, whatever) it is in the "bracket" part of Objective-C. Reason 3: The two above do work quite well toget…

Or you could pick a well thought out OO language like Java or C#, maybe even Python. Unfortunately you're trapped using the abomination for iPhone development unless you pick Monotouch.

Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#43

Post by zerostar07 »

Inufu wrote: post #30

Am I the only one who thinks Objective-C is complete crap compared to Scala, Haskell and the likes? Hell, even C++ is way faster to code in and provides a better experience. Obj C is just immensely verbose. I'd love to be able to use Qt + C++ to program iOS instead..

You 're not the only one. I too think speed of development and maintenance is key. It's just that lots of people live in (and on) the Apple bubble. I think Obj-c was one of Jobs' obsessions or else i can't explain why anyone would want to force people to write code like that in 2011. I have a feeling that Apple may open up their APIs now that he;s gone.

Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#44

Post by jballanc »

praptak wrote: post #2

Meh. I do not program in Objective-C but I think I can provide more reasons for liking the language than the linked article contains :) Reason 1: When you need what C provides, it is right there for you (being a superset of C) Reason 2: When you need what C does not provide (basic reflection, generics, polymorphism, whatever) it is in the "bracket" part of Objective-C. Reason 3: The two above do work quite well toget…

You can actually go one step further with your "Reason 2". Many may not realize this, but everything that you can do with the "bracket" part of Objective-C you can also do with straight-up C and the Objective-C Runtime methods.

This is where I get to promote my favorite page of documentation ever: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/...

Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#45

Post by zerostar07 »

atomicdog wrote: post #20

>Objective-C was Apple’s response to object-oriented programming Apple's response? At its inception it had nothing to do with Apple and for a long time was the language of NeXT. It's only since OSX that Apple has adopted Objective-C.

Since it's not mentioned anywhere, Obj-C was invented by Brad Cox and Tom Love and NeXT licenced it from them.

Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#46

Post by jballanc »

codehalo wrote: post #39
rbanffy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NeXT bought Apple for minus US$400 million and renamed itself Apple ;-) Apple's CEO came from NeXT, as did their lead software architect. OSX is NeXT (ever wonder why so many things extend NSObject?).

FYI, NeXTs' CEO was Apple's CEO first. The parents point is correct.

Actually...no. Jobs was never CEO until after the NeXT merger.

Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#47

Post by Derbasti »

gte910h wrote: post #38
atomicdog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression most developers use Objective-C because they have to, rather than because they want to. Take a look at the Tiobe graph for Objective-C: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/Objective-C.ht... I have a feeling it would see a distinct dropoff in usage if Apple were to change their focus to, say, Java or C++.

It's my favorite C variant (including C itself).

I agree. It is exactly what the name implies: a somewhat minimal object orientation layer on top of C.

I wouldn't say the same thing about Cocoa though. Cocoa is good, but not great.

Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#48

Post by plinkplonk »

IPlusOneYou wrote: post #41
praptak wrote: post #2

Meh. I do not program in Objective-C but I think I can provide more reasons for liking the language than the linked article contains :) Reason 1: When you need what C provides, it is right there for you (being a superset of C) Reason 2: When you need what C does not provide (basic reflection, generics, polymorphism, whatever) it is in the "bracket" part of Objective-C. Reason 3: The two above do work quite well toget…

Or you could pick a well thought out OO language like Java or C#, maybe even Python. Unfortunately you're trapped using the abomination for iPhone development unless you pick Monotouch.

"well thought out OO language like Java"

Not even Java's fans would defend it as a "well thought out OO" language.

Since this is Hacker News, it maybe appropriate to point out that nothing prevents you from building whatever specific flavour of OO you want on top of the Objective C runtime, if you want it badly enough.

Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#49

Post by weaksauce »

jballanc wrote: post #44
praptak wrote: post #2

Meh. I do not program in Objective-C but I think I can provide more reasons for liking the language than the linked article contains :) Reason 1: When you need what C provides, it is right there for you (being a superset of C) Reason 2: When you need what C does not provide (basic reflection, generics, polymorphism, whatever) it is in the "bracket" part of Objective-C. Reason 3: The two above do work quite well toget…

You can actually go one step further with your "Reason 2". Many may not realize this, but everything that you can do with the "bracket" part of Objective-C you can also do with straight-up C and the Objective-C Runtime methods. This is where I get to promote my favorite page of documentation ever: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/...

That's an excellent page, thanks!

This actually makes me wonder... how much overhead is in each objective c object over a similar struct in c?

Re: I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that.

#50

Post by angersock »

davedx wrote: post #11
Derbasti wrote: post #10

The only thing I really don't like about Objective C is that message passing is considerably slower than function calling. You just can not manipulate an image using the `setPixelX:Y:` method in anything close to real time. Using functions in C, this is no problem. So, there you go: Write your algorithms in C, write your program logic in Objective C. Oh, and I love how the OpenGL C API interacts so nicely with Object…

I think the nature of OpenGL's API (internal state, very simple C-style functions - contrast with DX) means it is very portable. Java also interacts nicely with it, as does C++, and I've not worked with WebGL but the very fact it exists says something about it. OpenGL is great. Really well designed :)

OpenGL is a good API, but it's design is fairly terrible, and its implementations range from quirky to terrible (cosnider Intel's support for anything above 1.4).

The notion of internal state is fine and well for only the most trivial of programs--once you start doing something requiring multithreading nothing but sadness awaits.

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