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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)

#71

Post by Moschops »

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.

By request, more information.

We never ran any NeXT machines. There was no (and frequently continues to be, thankfully - we've got some good negotiators who manage to convince the customer that picking the language themselves is often not smart) customer requirement on language. As I recall, a number of candidate languages were examined as a replacement for C (which was what we were mostly using at the time) and the lightness of Obj-C, its Smalltalk-like object model and the ease of training newcomers to go from C to Obj-C, were amongst the reasons.

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

#72

Post by sek »

rbarooah wrote: post #11
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?

You could make the same argument for other languages - I've never used Java out of preference, but have written 100,000s of lines of it because it was what was required to get the job done in the context. I still think it's popular.

There is always the point where the ecosystem is the killer feature. Rails made Ruby very popular.

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

#73

Post by JadeNB »

VMG wrote: post #13
peteretep wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 months ago, there were 250 million iOS devices had been sold - that's iOS only, no Macs. I make that one for every 28 human beings on this planet. What number would tip this so that you considered Apple devices to be common?

To be fair, many people own multiple iOS devices.

According to http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+cars+on+Earth, there are under 700 million cars on Earth. I think a ratio of 3 cars : 1 of your product counts as its being popular, even if some people own more than one. :-)

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

#74

Post by matwood »

vpdn wrote: post #35
mpweiher wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objective-C the language has always been extremely portable. Even pre-NeXT there were compilers/runtimes for Atari, Amiga, Mac, DOS/Windows, Unix, QNX, and probably a bunch of other systems I am not aware of. When NeXT shared their compiler patches and runtime (after some GPL-prodding), Objective-C became part of gcc and available on pretty much any supported platform, especially after the GNU-runtime delivered a por…

> Objective-C the language has always been extremely portable. Is there some inherent feature of the language that would make it more portable than others?

Obj-C is basically C with objects. The first objective-c versions were simply pre-processors that generated C code.

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

#75

Post by dfox »

conradev wrote: post #46
vpdn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Objective-C the language has always been extremely portable. Is there some inherent feature of the language that would make it more portable than others?

It sits directly atop C, which, for example, is why C++ is very portable.

There is significant difference between C++ and Objective-C in this matter. Implementations of C++ that emit C are almost always implemented as full compilers that targets C as output language, but Objective-C can be easily implemented as quite simple preprocessor on top of C, that has almost no understanding of C's syntax. (traditional Objective-C, ie. without closures and such features)

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

#76

Post by canthonytucci »

stcredzero wrote: post #38

Another datapoint for my theory for how Slashdot worked: the usual mob made enough actual experts mad enough to comment and other annoyed clueful people moderated those comments up. From what I have seen, Apple succeeds in part because they have a corporate culture that fosters good OO and good software architecture. Most companies through the early 2000's didn't have enough BS filtering capability to accomplish this…

"Another datapoint for my theory for how Slashdot worked: the usual mob made enough actual experts mad enough to comment and other annoyed clueful people moderated those comments up."

This made my day.

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

#77

Post by cicero »

I heard about Objective-C before C++. The big complaint I remember about Objective-C was that it had a very different syntax for the O-O parts. When C++ came along, it was seen as having O-O more integrated into the C language. Also, I think Borland's Turbo C++ was a big boost for the language, which probably led to Microsoft adopting C++ rather than Objective-C. Also, I think the strong type checking and fast polymorphic dispatch were attractive features.

Another thing to remember is that compilers were expensive back then. You couldn't just download a language from the web and try it out. Trying a new language mean an investment of several hundred dollars, and so you tended to just stick with your first choice. Turbo C++ was probably the first O-O language available for less than $100, so that became many people's introduction to O-O.

I found C++ to be complex and difficult, but I thought that was just the price to pay for O-O. Later, when I learned Smalltalk, I realized that was not necessarily the case.

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

#78

Post by Tichy »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #65
Tichy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because I suck... I just didn't manage to jump ship yet. I'd take off time for months to work on my own projects but usually failed to finish what I started. Then money would get low and I would accept the next Java contract to make money again. These days I tell the recruiters that I am leaning towards Rails and JavaScript, but in both I don't really have as much experience as with Java. I did some small things with Rails, but I also don't have the killer combination of design sense and coding skill that the younger Rails devs seem to have. Still, I have rejected most Java projects in the last three years. Might grudgingly look into Android, though (I like Android, but I hate Java, as has probably become clear...).

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

#79

Post by Tichy »

davidw wrote: post #43
Tichy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

http://www.welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics Is something I wrote about it several years ago.

I guess once Apple has created thousands of Objective-C developers (already done), it might become interesting for other things, too. It is a self-feeding loop.

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

#80

Post by canthonytucci »

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?

> Is Objective-C really popular now? I mean would people volunteer to use it, if they weren't forced by Apple?

I would say No and No. I'm in agreement with John Siracusa on this one, even with ARC Apple can't hang on to Objective-C forever.

John Siracusa's piece: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/copland-2010-revis...

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