Live data from Hacker News

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

ask.slashdot.org

11–20 of 93 posts

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

#11
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.

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

#13
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.

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.

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

#14
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.

[deleted]

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

#15
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.

Could you? Because there's the Mono project for .Net for example. Which seems pretty popular. Where's the ObjC equivalent?

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

#17
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.

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?

[deleted]

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

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you? Because there's the Mono project for .Net for example. Which seems pretty popular. Where's the ObjC equivalent?

A Mono-a-like is not required as Apple has fully open sourced it. Instead there's GCC, Clang and http://www.gnustep.org/

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

#19
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.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Apple sold around ~133 million iOS devices in 2011. How is that "not common"?
Post reply on HN