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He is at the first stage of Cocoa development. Learning a new language is fun, and you can create some really cool stuff with the Cocoa frameworks. But once tha

He is at the first stage of Cocoa development. Learning a new language is fun, and you can create some really cool stuff with the Cocoa frameworks. But once that wears off you are left with Objective-C, a vestigial language that isn't suited for a majority of application development. Here are some reasons I think Objective-C needs to be retired: - Header Files: These are archaic and require you to repeat code unnecessarily. Compiler's shouldn't require humans to do something that computers are better at. - No Automatic Garbage Collection: In ObjC 2.0 we have this, but not on the iPhone. Unless you are making a high performance game, there is no reason the phone can't handle Automatic GC. - No NSDictionary/NSArray literals: [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjectsAndKeys:@"value", @"key", @"value2", @"key2", nil]; // Enough said - No regex: You kind of get regex's in 3.2+, but they are very limited and require around 3-4 lines of setup to get anything done. - Xcode: You are pretty much required to use Xcode and I don't like Xcode. Even if you use the "xcodebuild" CLI, you still have to create the project through Xcode. - Closures: I guess we will be able to use these soon, but it is going to take awhile for all the API's to get updated to accommodate them. - No dynamic variables: It's handy to be able to shove data into objects sometimes. It's a hack, but as long as you treat it as such you can save a lot of needless code. (You can do this via the ObjC runtime, but it's messy) - Unit Testing: It barely exists and is difficult to use. - No namespacing: ObjC handles namespaces by prefixing class names. Blah, that is so 1978.

jeremymcanally 16y ago
Compared to other C-supersets, it's not the worst thing ever, but yeah I totally agree with you that Obj-C is painful compared to many newer languages. So glad that MacRuby is pretty much usable now. I just wish I could use it for iPhone development. :)
- gte910h 16y ago
  Out of C, C++ and Objective-C, I'll take objective C any day.
cpprocket 16y ago
Am I the only person in the world who happened to like header files? It's a nice tool (for me) to separate interface declaration from modules/classes, so it's much easier to navigate massive codebases without the help from IDE. Seriously, how would you get a list of all functions in a module without an IDE? Besides, I put all my documentation into h-files as well, so other devs can pretty much see what I am doing without ever glancing at c-files. With Ruby or Java you need some advanced folding support in your editor or a full-fledged IDE.
- jawngee 16y ago
  No I'm with you re: header files. These "people" don't also seem to get when you distribute a lib, you need to distribute headers with them.
jawngee 16y ago
> a vestigial language that isn't suited for a majority of application development. But good enough to write major parts of an operating system in by a company full of people easily smarter than you? Say what? > Header Files It's C for chrissakes. > No GC on the iPhone Because it's a performance penalty. Clock cycles on a phone are vastly more important than on a desktop/laptop. I can guarantee you this will change in a few years. > No NSDictionary/NSArray literals It's not a scripting language. Show me array literals in C or C++ that map to an underlying collection class that gives you fast enumeration and then we talk. > Xcode Personal preference. > Closures They're called Blocks. > No dymanic variables It's called 'id'. id whatever = [[YourObject alloc] init]; But even better: id whatever = [[NSClassFromString(@"YourClass") alloc] init]; Or how about setting properties on objects dynamically? [yourinstance setValue:@"Hello" forKey:@"property"]; Or dynamically dispatching methods? Ever messed with vtables in C++? > Unit Testing Agree, but that's changing. > No namespacing You bitch about all the typing, but you want to type out namespaces instead of using a prefix on your classnames. Ok ... Your confusing ObjC with Ruby, Python, et al. But it is not any of those. Like I mentioned elsewhere, it's a high level layer on a low level language. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
cameldrv 16y ago
Array literals: This one bugged me too. Try this: #define NSDICT(...) [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: __VA_ARGS__, nil] #define NSARRAY(...) [NSArray arrayWithObjects: __VA_ARGS__, nil]

jeremymcanally 16y ago

Compared to other C-supersets, it's not the worst thing ever, but yeah I totally agree with you that Obj-C is painful compared to many newer languages. So glad that MacRuby is pretty much usable now. I just wish I could use it for iPhone development. :)

gte910h 16y ago
Out of C, C++ and Objective-C, I'll take objective C any day.

cpprocket 16y ago

Am I the only person in the world who happened to like header files? It's a nice tool (for me) to separate interface declaration from modules/classes, so it's much easier to navigate massive codebases without the help from IDE. Seriously, how would you get a list of all functions in a module without an IDE? Besides, I put all my documentation into h-files as well, so other devs can pretty much see what I am doing without ever glancing at c-files. With Ruby or Java you need some advanced folding support in your editor or a full-fledged IDE.

jawngee 16y ago
No I'm with you re: header files. These "people" don't also seem to get when you distribute a lib, you need to distribute headers with them.

jawngee 16y ago

> a vestigial language that isn't suited for a majority of application development. But good enough to write major parts of an operating system in by a company full of people easily smarter than you? Say what? > Header Files It's C for chrissakes. > No GC on the iPhone Because it's a performance penalty. Clock cycles on a phone are vastly more important than on a desktop/laptop. I can guarantee you this will change in a few years. > No NSDictionary/NSArray literals It's not a scripting language. Show me array literals in C or C++ that map to an underlying collection class that gives you fast enumeration and then we talk. > Xcode Personal preference. > Closures They're called Blocks. > No dymanic variables It's called 'id'. id whatever = [[YourObject alloc] init]; But even better: id whatever = [[NSClassFromString(@"YourClass") alloc] init]; Or how about setting properties on objects dynamically? [yourinstance setValue:@"Hello" forKey:@"property"]; Or dynamically dispatching methods? Ever messed with vtables in C++? > Unit Testing Agree, but that's changing. > No namespacing You bitch about all the typing, but you want to type out namespaces instead of using a prefix on your classnames. Ok ... Your confusing ObjC with Ruby, Python, et al. But it is not any of those. Like I mentioned elsewhere, it's a high level layer on a low level language. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

cameldrv 16y ago

Array literals: This one bugged me too. Try this: #define NSDICT(...) [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: __VA_ARGS__, nil] #define NSARRAY(...) [NSArray arrayWithObjects: __VA_ARGS__, nil]