Re: If Object-C is "the" language, then why is no one using it?
Re: If Object-C is "the" language, then why is no one using it?
- Subject: Re: If Object-C is "the" language, then why is no one using it?
- From: Nathan Day <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 22:24:18 +1030
On Sunday, November 17, 2002, at 09:37 PM, Niels Peter Strandberg
wrote:
Im not trying to tell you anything about Object-C. because im just
learning it.
In my lack of knowledge, please allow me to ask this question! If
Object-C is "the" language, then why is no one using it? (compared to
java, c, c++ - object-c is not used in large numbers)
When objective-C and C++ first started to be used, computer where not
as fast as they are now and so people choose c++, as it was designed to
have no inherent performance disadvantage to c, thats why all
member-functions are non-virtual by default, and so c++ took off. Java
became popular because of it's promise of being platform independent,
really it is a platform in it's own right, thats why java program don't
look or behave like Mac programs, you can of cause use java with cocoa
or some other API that is designed to work with a specific operating
system, but then that defeats the purpose.
What that tells me is that Object-C is only alive because of Apple!
And Apple seams to abandon it in favor for Java.
I don't think apple is abandoning Objective-C, cocoa is in objective-c
and they have continued developing that, some of apple apps are in
objective-c, I think Text Edit was in java at some stage but it was to
slow. Java gui apps seem to be pretty slow, some attempts to produce
java desktop apps have been abandoned or scaled back because of
performance reasons. Despite the stories the JIT compiler is not as
fast as properly compiled and optimized c code, which is what a lot of
Objective-c is. By it's self as a self contained language objective-c
is not that great, some people have referred to it as a poor imitation
of smalltalk, which is missing the point, one of the great things about
Objective-C is it integrates seamlessly within c environments like unix
or carbon.
I love the Java language, but I hate the speed of the VM, and the lack
of a strong native GUI support + other stuff.
Im not a .NET fan (and im not going to use it), but MS is doing things
with C# that Sun should have done with Java.
c# does seem to be more targeted to building desktop apps than java,
but then thats because thats where MS make their money, desktop apps
only make up a small part of the worlds software development, when sun
first started pushing Java it was promoted as the language for embedded
systems. C# seems to be pretty much a rip off of java, which is not a
crime in itself, would be nice if MS was a bit more honest about it
though.
Maybe if Apple made cocoa work on Windows, Object-C would bloom.
Why not do like GCJ, Do your programming in Java, and skip the VM, and
compile to native ppc, using the cocoa framework?
As has been said many times before, if you know c, the effort to
learning Objective-c is minimal in comparison to learning cocoa,
learning Objective-C is also a good education exercise as the runtime
system is quite open to the programmer and so give you some insight
into how dynamic languages can work. Also with it's emphasis on
messaging and objects as program components as opposed to the c++ and
to a certain degree the java emphasis of abstract data types and the
operations you perform on them, objective-C give a different
perspective on oop that you might not otherwise get.
Nathan Day
http://homepage.mac.com/nathan_day/
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