I was put-off learning Objective-C for a long, long time because of
the niche status of the language. However, I finally decided to learn
Cocoa and Mac development this year.
I find Objective-C better than C++ for several reasons. I don't think
it's fair to compare Objective-C to Java in terms of a native
platform language though. I think the proper context would be to
compare Objective-C to C++.
In that regard, I like Objective-C better than C++ because the
language is much simpler. Most software developers with a BS degree
in CompSci will have had exposure to C already; the additions to C
that Objective-C provides are very, very easy to learn.
The Objective-C runtime environment was created circa 1987 (ish),
long before Java existed, so that is why I don't think comparing the
two is quite appropriate. Objective-C is a dynamic language with a
lot of concepts borrowed from Smalltalk. It has a very different
programming model than Java. Whereas Java tries to make as many
decisions as possible at compile time, Objective-C tries to defer as
much as possible until runtime. (I will concede Java does have many
modern language features that I would like to see added to Objective-
C.) Thus they have different goals.
The Cocoa framework would not mesh well with the JVM runtime model.
The additional benefit of Objective-C over Java (for writing native
Mac apps) is that it is quite easy to use libraries/frameworks
written in either Cocoa (Objective-C), straight C, (like OpenGL for
example) or C++ libraries. For these reasons and others, I have come
to really like Objective-C, although I probably will never *really*
like the message calling syntax ;) It could have worked *just* as
well with the traditional parenthesized notation.
Rob Ross, Lead Software Engineer
E! Networks
email@hidden
---------------------------------------------------
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his
heart he dreams himself your master." -- Commissioner Pravin Lal
On Aug 17, 2006, at 3:59 AM, Elliotte Harold wrote:
This thread convinced me to start reading about Objective-C. More
soon, but the short version is GACK! This is not a modern language.
Leaving library issues and VM aside, Java is a vastly superior
language. Apple would have done themselves and their developers a
big favor if they had based Cocoa on Java or C#-like knockoff
rather than Objective-C.
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