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

http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/2256/objective-c-is-the-language

by falling • 15 years ago

85 79 15 years ago

praptak• 15 years ago

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 together - the impedance mismatch is minimal, compared to e.g. Python with extensions written in C.

blub2• 15 years ago

One of these days I will write a detailed account of my experience learning Obj-C, but for now I'll say this:

The fact that Obj-C takes C and adds objects on top is its biggest flaw, just like with C++. Worse than C++ though, Obj-C doesn't even attempt to fix at least some of C's more glaring flaws... you get the whole language, quirks and all.

chalst2• 15 years ago

I think it depends on what you want from the language. If you want to write C and gain some safety through the use of the message-passing abstraction, it's perfect. If you want a real high-level language, it's lousy.

IPlusOneYou• 15 years ago

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.

plinkplonk• 15 years ago

"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.

pnathan• 15 years ago

I would not call Python a well-thought out OO language. Its OO is essentially a cranked up dict; the abstraction over the dict is just barely papered over. It can get pretty awkward.

jballanc2• 15 years ago

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/...

weaksauce• 15 years ago

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?

joelthelion3• 15 years ago

People who like C should definitely take a look at Go. I think it can be a good alternative for higher-level projects.

stock_toaster2• 15 years ago

I was personally a little off-put by Go. Some things just felt a little odd to me, after an admittedly small amount of time with the language (implemented a trivial app with it to play around).

That said, I did quite like some aspects of it: goroutines, channels, functions can be added to structs.

I am hoping that rust makes it out of the lab at some point.

joelthelion3• 15 years ago

I don't have a lot of experience in Go either (I'm writing my bot for the AI challenge in Go), but so far I've been very happy with it. What did you feel was odd?

dubya• 15 years ago

My biggest annoyance with Go is that Google, a search company, gave their language a completely un-Google-able name. I'm pretty sure the term "Go" invokes special handling.

asshammer• 15 years ago

For what its worth, you can add functions to structs in C using function pointers.

jayfuerstenberg• 15 years ago

Objective-C is a natural language to learn for developers coming from Java too.

And you don't have to give up the power of C (memory pointers etc...) either.

xradionut2• 15 years ago

Objective-C is the choice if you are developing for Apple products. But coming from Java, C# and Mono were a much easier switch.

lowglow• 15 years ago

When I first started coding in Objective-C, I hated it because it just felt "wrong". The more I learned the language, the more I enjoyed programming in it. I still think some things are a bit awkward, but like anything new, it just takes time to learn to love it.

cageface2• 15 years ago

Objective-C is a nice UI glue language but I wouldn't want to write anything of any algorithmic complexity in it. The data structures are just way too awkward and manual boxing/unboxing of primitives puts it way over the top.

I write my iOS app UIs in Obj-C but the brains are in a C++ core. The new C++11 support in LLVM 3.0 has tipped the balance that much further.

blub2• 15 years ago

If you think Obj-C is nice, try Qt's QML - it's a declarative language with JSON-like syntax that also allows you to embed JS and interact with C++.

Probably one of the easiest and more powerful ways to create an UI, but not as mature as other consacrated frameworks and not available on iOS anyway.

By the way, how do you handle unicode in the C++ core?

cageface2• 15 years ago

I'm kind of stuck with Obj-C on iOS but I can totally believe you could build an abstraction layer like the one you describe over vanilla C++ that would give you most of the benefits of Obj-C. Clang's Obj-C++ support makes it pretty painless to mix Obj-C and C++ as long as you clearly delineate responsibilities.

So far I haven't had to do any serious string handling in my C++ engines (mostly audio apps). The new unicode stuff in C++11 ought to make this manageable but I haven't actually tried it yet.

natesm• 15 years ago

> manual boxing/unboxing of primitives puts it way over the top

FWIW: https://github.com/NateStedman/FunSize/blob/master/FunSize/N...

Derbasti3• 15 years ago

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 Objective C and Cocoa!

That said, I have a fair bit of experience with PyQt. I would ditch Objective C for something like MacRuby any day, but then I would (sorta) lose the ability to drop down to C if need be. (Still, does anyone have any solid experience in MacRuby? I would love to hear some!)

davedx• 15 years ago

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 :)

angersock2• 15 years ago

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.

atnan• 15 years ago

This is why the graphics APIs are C.

Also, if you're calling an Objective-C method and dynamic dispatch is causing measurable performance issues, you can cache a pointer to the C function that backs the method (called the IMP) via the class_getMethodImplementation() runtime API.

tilltheis• 15 years ago

I tried MacRuby once a few months ago (https://github.com/tilltheis/fullscreenclock) and I have to tell you the Cocoa parts lacked some essential features (like correct syncing of Ruby and Cocoa setters). But the nice thing about it is that you can intermix Obj-C and Ruby code freely to write the low level parts of your app in C/Obj-C if you want to. There is even a bridge between C/Obj-C and Ruby which enables you to call native functions from your Ruby code.

simonh• 15 years ago

Would anyone care to comment on the state of Obj-C outside the Mac/iOS platforms? The impression I get from previous posts on this is that the utility of Obj-C is closely tied to the functionality provided by the (proprietary) Cocoa platform.

Since there are so many developers from outside the Apple ecosystem learning Obj-C in order to develop for iOS, is there any signs of a movement in the other direction? Are developers who don't think of themselves as purely Mac/iOS developers trying to take Obj-C back with them to other platforms?

Posts about how great or poor Obj-C is as a language are kind of irrelevant really as long as it's (effectively) the mandatory language for development on Apple platforms, and isn't much used beyond that. In that situation there are no choices to be made based on opinions about the language's merits or flaws, so they are largely moot.

Derbasti3• 15 years ago

As far as I am concerned, Obj-C and Cocoa are so tightly integrated into each other that using one without the other is a rather pointless exercise.

There are compilers available to use Obj-C (the language) on just about any platform. I guess you could use Obj-C to write GTK or Qt code (I doubt that the Qt preprocessor would like that, though).

If you read that Obj-C is great, that usually means that Obj-C is great for Cocoa. Cocoa and Obj-C make for a great team! Probably comparable to Android and Java or .NET and C#. It ultimately does not matter whether Obj-C would be of much use without Cocoa, since almost all people will be using it as part of Cocoa.

Great tires are of little import if you don't own a car.

icebraining• 15 years ago

There's GNUstep.

atomicdog2• 15 years ago

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++.

gte910h2• 15 years ago

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

arthurschreiber• 15 years ago

You might want to check out Étoilé - http://etoileos.com/

sreitshamer• 15 years ago

For porting Cocoa apps to Windows, there's Cocotron: http://cocotron.org/

jlarocco• 15 years ago

A while back I tried learning Objective-C on Linux. My end goal was to do iOS development, but I wanted to try it out before I spent the money on a Mac. Maybe I'd hate Obj-C and know immediately it wasn't for me...

Using the Objective-C language on Debian was as easy as doing "apt-get install gobjc". But, as you stated, most of the utility comes from Cocoa.

Even though it's technically possible to use Objective-C without Cocoa, in practice it's almost not worth it. It's not like C++ where you can chose between Qt and Gtk+ or some other big library. There's Cocoa/Foundation or there's nothing. It would be hard to find learning material that didn't use Cocoa, even if you wanted to try it.

There are a few alternative Cocoa implementations that run on Linux and even Windows.

Cocotron lets you create Windows apps using Cocoa, but it's a cross-compiler that runs in XCode. Didn't fit my needs, so I didn't try it.

libNuFound was pretty good for the Foundation part of Cocoa, but it took a bit of work to make it work. Objective-C with only Foundation has a lot more functionality than plain Objective-C, but still no where near the usefulness of Cocoa.

The most complete and most popular option is GNUStep. It implements Foundation and a good chunk of Cocoa. They've done good work, but the documentation was lacking, and I never knew whether code I saw on the web and in Cocoa tutorials would work under GNUStep, without trying it. Apple's developer documentation is really good, and I used it as much as possible, but it was pretty common to run into stuff that didn't work under GNUStep. My other big complaint was that it's a really heavy weight "library." I don't know if it's their fault, but I vaguely remember having to install a bunch of seemingly unrelated dependencies just to get their *-dev packages installed on Debian.

Perhaps not the best comparison, but for me, using GNUStep libraries to develop Cocoa always felt like using Wine to run Windows programs.

I had a few other links about setting everything up, but these two were helpful:

http://blog.vucica.net/2010/12/getting-objective-c-2-0-to-wo...

http://orangejuiceliberationfront.com/playing-with-objective...

FWIW, I did eventually buy a Mac, and can say Objective-C and Cocoa on iMac is much easier on OSX than Debian.

atomicdog2• 15 years ago

>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.

rbanffy2• 15 years ago

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?).

codehalo• 15 years ago

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

zerostar072• 15 years ago

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

protomyth• 15 years ago

to add, if you haven't read Brad Cox's books then you really should. They are not heavy technical, but give time to some serious ideas. They are a little hard to get ahold of these days.

rbanffy2• 15 years ago

Having learned object orientation with Smalltalk/V, I never quite liked C++ (to the point of procrastinating for 8 years before really touching it). It felt just wrong.

Objective-C was always attractive (I like C), but its close association with NeXT and Apple (and corresponding little support from other platforms) always puts me off.

xradionut2• 15 years ago

I like C. I really like Smalltalk. But Objective-C really doesn't do OO well enough for me to enjoy dealing with it.

xsmasher• 15 years ago

Doesn't do OO well enough? That's not a complaint I've heard before. What makes you say that?

Inufu• 15 years ago

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..

zerostar072• 15 years ago

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.

shabble• 15 years ago

Does submitting to the App Store require you to provide source? If so, it seems like a compelling reason to enforce a single language to avoid the explosion in skills required for the app reviewers.

Otherwise, I have no idea.

ramitos• 15 years ago

I've only coded a (really) simple app in Obj-c, but disliked the syntax.

beej71• 15 years ago

Now, I've coded a lot of stuff in Objective C for iOS, and it works just fine, and I actually think it's a pretty good language. I'm glad that Apple has helped bring it more into the spotlight.

But ramitos is right; it really is a Frankensteinian bolt-on addition of Smalltalk, syntax-wise. The message passing code simply does not look like C.

That said, I'd encourage everyone to give it a chance. I, too, had a negative reaction to it when I first encountered it ("It's so ugly!") but you get used to it, and then it's fine.

msbarnett• 15 years ago

> The message passing code simply does not look like C.

Arguably that's a very good thing, because passing a message has very different semantics from calling a function. Making the syntaxes of these operations identical would encourage a lot of confusion between two very different operations.

angersock2• 15 years ago

So, where in this article did the author actually state why Objective-C fixed C for them? Where was a listing of C's failings or Objective-C's strengths for their projects?

This is not really a good submission--it's got the rhetorical content of a tweet.

TorKlingberg• 15 years ago

Is anyone using Objective-C as a systems language? That is, without Cocoa and other Apple libraries and APIs? Otherwise, why is it worth comparing it to C? Is anyone suggesting that Linus could write the Linux kernel or git in Objective-C? Objective-C is more fairly comparable to Java, C#, Qt or GTK rather than plain C.

Most people who say they like Objective-C actually mean they like programming for Macs and iPhones.

jensnockert• 15 years ago

Yes, I am. And it is fine, either using ObjFW, GNUstep (which is essentially Cocoa) or just writing it raw with my own framework. It is a nice language, and the C apis to the runtimes are pretty nice.

rndholesqpeg• 15 years ago

I wanted to play with Objective-C for some numeric computing, but until Intel's c++ compiler supports it there really was no point in even getting started with it for me (sorry gcc)

cmelbye• 15 years ago

Maybe I'm weird, but I actually really like Objective-C. My mind likes how the language works. I just wish there was more of a community around it so that it could more easily be used for things other than iOS/Mac development.

algoshift• 15 years ago

These are just tools. Each has its place.

Example: I wrote a GA-based solver in Objective-C. It worked but it was painfully slow. I re-coded in nice-clean C. The plain C version was incredibly fast and efficient in every way. Best of all, it is highly portable too.

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

Related Stories