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Why Objective-C

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Re: Why Objective-C

#31

Post by cosmic_cheese »

vintagedave wrote: post #3

I really miss Objective-C, and in the world of Swift craziness [1] I'm reminded often of this blog post [2] wondering what would have happened if Apple hadn't encountered Second System Syndrome for its recommended language. (There's a decent argument it encountered it in iOS and macOS too.) [1] https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... -- apologies to the authors, but even as a previous C++ guy,…

Obj-C’s simplicity can be nice, but on the other hand I don’t miss having to bring in a laundry list of CocoaPods to have features that are standard in Swift. I don’t miss maintaining header files or having to operate in old codebases that badly manage Obj-C’s looseness either.

Re: Why Objective-C

#32

Post by flohofwoe »

9rx wrote: post #28
flohofwoe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end though most of those 'sending a message' actions are just fancy virtual method calls (e.g. an indirect jump), everything else would be much too slow: https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2017-06-30-dissecti... IMHO the whole 'message' and 'sending' lingo should be abandondend, the job of objc_msgSend is to look up a function pointer by certain rules. There are no 'messages' involved, and nothing is 'se…

> There are no 'messages' involved, and nothing is 'sent'. The conceptual difference is significant as an object can respond to messages that it doesn't have a method for. You are, conceptually, just sending a message and leave it up to the object what it wants to do with it (e.g. forwardInvocation:). That is, after all, what sets "object-oriented" apart from having objects alone. Optimizations that can be made under…

> can respond to messages that it doesn't have a method for.

Clang produces a warning in that case though (something along the lines of "object might not respond to ..."), I don't think that feature is particularly useful in practice (also because it kills any sort of type safety) :)

Re: Why Objective-C

#33

Post by 9rx »

flohofwoe wrote: post #32
9rx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no 'messages' involved, and nothing is 'sent'. The conceptual difference is significant as an object can respond to messages that it doesn't have a method for. You are, conceptually, just sending a message and leave it up to the object what it wants to do with it (e.g. forwardInvocation:). That is, after all, what sets "object-oriented" apart from having objects alone. Optimizations that can be made under…

> can respond to messages that it doesn't have a method for. Clang produces a warning in that case though (something along the lines of "object might not respond to ..."), I don't think that feature is particularly useful in practice (also because it kills any sort of type safety) :)

It was incredibly useful in the olden days. The NeXT/Apple ecosystem leaned on it heavily.

We have new ways to approach problems nowadays, so it may be fair to say that object-oriented programming is a relic of the past. I mean, it is telling that Smalltalk, Objective-C, and Ruby are the only languages to ever go down that road. Still, if you are using an OO language, then it makes sense to lean into OO features. Otherwise, why not use a language better suited to your problem?

Re: Why Objective-C

#35

Post by ihumanable »

mikehall314 wrote: post #34

Every so often I get weirdly obsessed with Objective-J, which "has the same relationship to JavaScript as Objective-C has to C". It is (was?) an absolutely bonkers project. I think it has more or less died since 280 North was acquired. https://www.cappuccino.dev/learn/objective-j.html

Same. I remember when this first came up and I was like "this is so weirdly interesting."

Sad that they got acquired because it was just fascinating what they were doing, even if I was never going to use it.

Re: Why Objective-C

#36

Post by zffr »

mikehall314 wrote: post #34

Every so often I get weirdly obsessed with Objective-J, which "has the same relationship to JavaScript as Objective-C has to C". It is (was?) an absolutely bonkers project. I think it has more or less died since 280 North was acquired. https://www.cappuccino.dev/learn/objective-j.html

Holy shit, it’s still being actively developed and maintained https://github.com/cappuccino/cappuccino

Re: Why Objective-C

#37

Post by millerm »

Wow, I haven't written any Objective-C since around 2012. I just went back and looked at some code I had written back then and that really brought back some memories. I was much happier then. I'm perpetually sad and unemployed now.

That's all. Enjoy yourselves.

Re: Why Objective-C

#38

Post by frou_dh »

waynecochran wrote: post #4

I still find Objective-C++ useful for writing MacOS apps that make heavy use of C++ libraries (e.g.; Eigen, OpenCV). The caveat is I have done a lot of Objective-C programming and Swift is still not as seamless as I would like bridging with modern C++ and the the STL.

Obj-C++ was used for some hall-of-fame OS X apps, e.g. TextMate

Re: Why Objective-C

#39

Post by nicoburns »

vintagedave wrote: post #3

I really miss Objective-C, and in the world of Swift craziness [1] I'm reminded often of this blog post [2] wondering what would have happened if Apple hadn't encountered Second System Syndrome for its recommended language. (There's a decent argument it encountered it in iOS and macOS too.) [1] https://github.com/swiftlang/swift-evolution/blob/main/propo... -- apologies to the authors, but even as a previous C++ guy,…

> Inside Swift is a slim language waiting to get out... and that slim language is just a safer Objective C.

Rust? Rust is basically a simpler Swift. The objective-c bindings are really nice too, and when you're working with obj-c you don't have have worry about lifetimes too much, because you can lean on the objective-c runtime's reference counting.

I think the way to think about it is that with Rust, it's as if all the goodness in Swift was implemented with in the "C" level, and the Objective-C but is still just library-level a runtime layer on top. Whereas Swift brings it's own runtime which greatly complicates things.

Re: Why Objective-C

#40

Post by sgt »

mikehall314 wrote: post #34

Every so often I get weirdly obsessed with Objective-J, which "has the same relationship to JavaScript as Objective-C has to C". It is (was?) an absolutely bonkers project. I think it has more or less died since 280 North was acquired. https://www.cappuccino.dev/learn/objective-j.html

Weren't they acquired by Motorola?
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