I think Objective-C is a great extension to C, much better than C++. It does sometimes involve more typing that I would like, but it's very simple and straight

I think Objective-C is a great extension to C, much better than C++. It does sometimes involve more typing that I would like, but it's very simple and straightforward. Message passing is very powerful and is what makes me like Objective-C much more than the more widely used object-oriented languages like C++ and Java. The biggest complaint I've heard about Objective-C other than people who just don't like its syntax is that on iOS you can't use garbage collection. However, using retain and release to do manual reference counting is pretty easy if you just follow the rules. As far as desktop programming frameworks go, Cocoa is by far my favorite. I've used WPF, Qt, and various Java libraries but none of them come close to the ease of use of Cocoa. Cocoa seems much more well thought out so while it does have a lot of classes to learn, once you understand how a few work you can easily use the rest. It also has classes for almost anything you would want from a framework. It sometimes requires more setup for very simple apps than other frameworks, but once you start building real applications you can see the benefits of that extra initial work.