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Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

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Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#61

Post by seclorum »

meow wrote: post #58
w0utert wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you state it is a little negative, but it's an interesting question nonetheless. I think Objective-C would not have been on many developers radar if it weren't for the fact that Apple frameworks use it extensively (they don't 'force it on you' by the way, as you can easily use C or C++ for anything except interfacing with Obj-C frameworks). That said, Obj-C for me is very much an acquired taste. I had seen it…

"they don't 'force it on you' by the way, as you can easily use C or C++ for anything except interfacing with Obj-C frameworks" Unfortunately, since most of the popularity is due to iOS applications - developers have to touch these frameworks at one point or another and that means touching at least a tiny bit of ObjC

Thing is though, with a bit of application of the Toll Free Bridge, you can access those frameworks from C or C++ as well ..

http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?HowToCreateTollFreeBridgedC...

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#62

Post by Argorak »

zerostar07 wrote: post #30

The (non)-success of GNUStep speaks volumes about how popular the ObjC library would be if it weren't for the monetary incentive provided by Apple.

I think the non-success of GNUStep is rooted in another problem: it is a beast to get running. I tried to get a GNUStep toolchain on my Mac when I started ObjC. No dice. Its really _hard_ to start. If GNUStep was as easy to start with like, say, QT, it would be much better.

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#63

Post by ShardPhoenix »

davidw wrote: post #32
reidrac wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered if that popularity is tied to Apple devices. I mean... are there projects using Obj-C out of an Apple context? Other sources: http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/ https://github.com/languages

Or, the best of them all: http://langpop.com

Unfortunately this hasn't been updated in almost a year.

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#64

Post by davidw »

ShardPhoenix wrote: post #63
davidw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, the best of them all: http://langpop.com

Unfortunately this hasn't been updated in almost a year.

I keep hoping someone will buy the thing from me. It's been fun to run it, and I think the metrics are a lot better than TIOBE's, but I just don't have the time any more.

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#65

Post by Daniel_Newby »

Tichy wrote: post #37
davidw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> individually decided Languages aren't used in a vacuum, and the economics of them involve positive network externalities and switching costs, so 'individually' needs some qualification.

What kind of thing do you mean? I was (to my utter dismay) a Java developer for more than 10 years. Most of the time I worked on business internal projects or J2ME. Seems to me that for internal projects, the businesses could have chosen anything? Of course there was the hype, the hope to find more developers, the idea that there should be only one language in the company and so on. (All wrong, imo...) Maybe all thos…

How can one have "utter dismay" for 10 years? Shouldn't it at least become "hopeless resignation" after the first few years?

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#66

Post by mahmud »

rbanffy wrote: post #47
Tichy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps for J2ME development, but apart from that I'd say thousands of companies have individually decided to use Java. Apple is just one company that has decided to use Objective-C. Edit: I forgot about Android, but Java was "popular" before that - in fact Android probably uses Java because Java was popular...

My favorite jab here is that thousands of IT managers, after some multi-day infomercial paid by IBM, Sun, BEA or Oracle, decided they'd buy something that limited their developers to Java. But really, Java is a fine language, not much worse than C++, and, as far as static typing goes, fairly OK. What bothers me most is the insane proliferation of bloated frameworks and tools that Java seems to generate around itself.…

Java is an excellent language, far superior to C++.

I only use Java SE and Apache Commons libraries, along with a very handful speciality libraries. Very little fuss. I like it.

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#67

Post by yardie »

Moschops wrote: post #34
Tichy wrote: post #8

Is Objective-C really popular now? I mean would people volunteer to use it, if they weren't forced by Apple? One indicator would be that there would be ports of Objective-C to many platforms, is that the case?

We've been using it for over a decade (small part of a major defense company). We do not (and have never) targeted any Apple operating systems.

Could you give some background on how that decision was made? I've only seen objC used in only a few situations. Usually academic and businesses that bought into NEXT computers. I've met a few neck beards who used it in Linux on GNUStep projects.

Outside of Apple and the few examples I haven't met anyone who has decided that objC was an obvious choice.

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#68

Post by glassx »

Tichy wrote: post #8

Is Objective-C really popular now? I mean would people volunteer to use it, if they weren't forced by Apple? One indicator would be that there would be ports of Objective-C to many platforms, is that the case?

Well, yes, it is popular, and yes, it is popular today because Apple uses it, but still, people are using it in projects that don't have much to do with iOS/OS X, such as Web Frameworks (Frothkit, Bombax) and client-side MVC (Cappuccino).

In this aspect it's similar to C#, and Mono, I think, but in a much smaller scale.

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#69

Post by batista »

sohn wrote: post #2

Unlike most of you Hacker News readers may think, Apple devices are not common out there (yes, I know, there are iPhones - yet they're too expensive and most of their applications are NOT being coded in Obj-C), so Obj-C didn't catch on yet.

Not according to sales.

For example the iPad is like 90%+ of all tables sold.

The iPhone has sold 100 million+.

The iPod has the majority of the mp3 player market.

The Mac has ~10% of the US market share.

As for "Obj-C didn't catch on", not true according to the TIOBE index.

Re: Why did Objective-C never catch on? (Ask Slashdot, Aug 2000)

#70

Post by batista »

gaius wrote: post #52
zerostar07 wrote: post #30

The (non)-success of GNUStep speaks volumes about how popular the ObjC library would be if it weren't for the monetary incentive provided by Apple.

I don't think it's that. Rather a) on OSX, you might as well use real Cocoa and b) on Linux, if you want to integrate with anything else, then you might as well use GNOME/KDE.

Exactly.

C# is extremely popular, but Mono is a tiny niche in the Linux world.

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