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Noob here. Where does ObjC fit into all this? I know it's primarily used in Mac development, but is there any language-specific reason it's excluded from these

Noob here. Where does ObjC fit into all this? I know it's primarily used in Mac development, but is there any language-specific reason it's excluded from these debates?

tptacek 16y ago
Imagine the good high level language, like Lisp or Lua, stepped into the teleportation chamber from _The Fly_ with C. It is not a terrible language to write in, once you get over the verbosity; it is not, for instance, the waking nightmare that C++ is. But as a deployed system it is the worst attributes of C and of interpreted languages: a complex runtime in which many (probably most) of the errors that can creep into deployable Ruby code can bite you even though your code passed both compilation and static analysis. Its high-level constructs for the most part share the same reliability issues that C++ has; exceptions, for instance, are not really any safer there than in C++. Blocks are nice, but I say that having only used them within the past few months. It could just be that the zombies haven't eaten their way to my particular shelter yet. They may, for instance, turn out to be horrible to debug. Imagine a variant of C or C++ that you have to unit test as vigilantly as Rails code, and you're not far off the mark.
- statictype 16y ago
  The retain/copy conventions are inconsistent for Blocks. But once you're aware of those, I haven't seen any major issues in using/debugging them.
wisty 16y ago
C is a good statically-typed language, but it's a bit basic. ObjC is a good statically-typed language. C++ is half a dozen good statically-typed languages, all fighting for supremacy like a ham actor's "multiple-personality-disorder" shtick.
- hboon 16y ago
  ObjC can use both static and dynamic typing.
- program 16y ago
  ObjC isn't statically-typed. Static typing informations only allows the compiler to warn the programmer about type mismatch. From the official docs: "Statically typed objects have the same internal data structures as objects declared to be of type id. The type doesn't affect the object; it affects only the amount of information given to the compiler about the object and the amount of information available to those reading the source code."
- blub 16y ago
  Objective-C is a good statically typed language? I must admit that this is new to me... How exactly is Obj-C "good"? Is it safer than C? Perhaps less verbose? Or maybe it's easier to use - libraries aside? Is it better because it runs on more platforms? Because it's standardized? If all else fails, I think it must be the way that it manages to merge two completely different programming paradigms by just stapling them one onto the other.

Noob here. Where does ObjC fit into all this? I know it's primarily used in Mac development, but is there any language-specific reason it's excluded from these debates?

tptacek 16y ago

Imagine the good high level language, like Lisp or Lua, stepped into the teleportation chamber from _The Fly_ with C. It is not a terrible language to write in, once you get over the verbosity; it is not, for instance, the waking nightmare that C++ is. But as a deployed system it is the worst attributes of C and of interpreted languages: a complex runtime in which many (probably most) of the errors that can creep into deployable Ruby code can bite you even though your code passed both compilation and static analysis. Its high-level constructs for the most part share the same reliability issues that C++ has; exceptions, for instance, are not really any safer there than in C++. Blocks are nice, but I say that having only used them within the past few months. It could just be that the zombies haven't eaten their way to my particular shelter yet. They may, for instance, turn out to be horrible to debug. Imagine a variant of C or C++ that you have to unit test as vigilantly as Rails code, and you're not far off the mark.

statictype 16y ago
The retain/copy conventions are inconsistent for Blocks. But once you're aware of those, I haven't seen any major issues in using/debugging them.

wisty 16y ago

C is a good statically-typed language, but it's a bit basic. ObjC is a good statically-typed language. C++ is half a dozen good statically-typed languages, all fighting for supremacy like a ham actor's "multiple-personality-disorder" shtick.

hboon 16y ago
ObjC can use both static and dynamic typing.
program 16y ago
ObjC isn't statically-typed. Static typing informations only allows the compiler to warn the programmer about type mismatch. From the official docs: "Statically typed objects have the same internal data structures as objects declared to be of type id. The type doesn't affect the object; it affects only the amount of information given to the compiler about the object and the amount of information available to those reading the source code."
blub 16y ago
Objective-C is a good statically typed language? I must admit that this is new to me... How exactly is Obj-C "good"? Is it safer than C? Perhaps less verbose? Or maybe it's easier to use - libraries aside? Is it better because it runs on more platforms? Because it's standardized? If all else fails, I think it must be the way that it manages to merge two completely different programming paradigms by just stapling them one onto the other.