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Each link in this lineage is tenuous. Objective-C took Smalltalk's call syntax, its class def (in a sense?), and its late fn binding, but little else. It certai

by ibiza 6y ago

Each link in this lineage is tenuous. Objective-C took Smalltalk's call syntax, its class def (in a sense?), and its late fn binding, but little else. It certainly didn't take what made Smalltalk, Smalltalk. Full disclosure: I really like both languages. I struggle to find the mapping between Objective-C and Swift, other than "same company" and must preserve backwards compatibility. Smalltalk became Squeak. Long live Squeak. :)

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I think that Swift got a lot of its "philosophical" structure from ObjC. After Swift was released, I understood why ObjC 2.0 was written the way that it was. It was modified to allow the standard libraries and SDKs to transition to Swift. I remember coming from C++ (CodeWarrior/PowerPlant), and encountering ObjC, and going "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?". After a while, though, I got used to it, and actually started to enjoy ObjC, in a way that C++ never got me. I enjoy Swift, even more. After years of writing code in languages I didn't really like (C++/PHP), Swift is something that I actually enjoy. I suspect that Smalltalk, and its affect, are responsible for the "enjoyment" factor of Swift. I consider most of the lineage to be "in spirit," more than "in detail." It's quite easy to shoot holes, if we get particular.