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Objective-C is verbose not just because of the NS suffixes. Everything is verbose (by today standards anyway). ObjC is a "child" of the 1980's when verbosity wa

by mojuba 6y ago

Objective-C is verbose not just because of the NS suffixes. Everything is verbose (by today standards anyway). ObjC is a "child" of the 1980's when verbosity was considered a merit and a norm in programming. Two things that I used to like about it: - Combination of static typing and at the same time pretty high level dynamic typing: it was practically possible to call any method on any object, right or wrong, just like in dynamic languages. For performance critical parts you could always resort to C. Later, as a little bonus it was also possible to resort to... C++. There was such a beast as Objective-C++. - The method calling syntax. Quite unusual but neat. I liked it a lot. However, Swift ruined it for me. Now that I'm a total Swift convert and I feel a 2x or even 3x boost in productivity I can't even look at Objective-C code anymore.

_qulr 6y ago
> ObjC is a "child" of the 1980's when verbosity was considered a merit and a norm in programming. It's still considered a merit by some.
- Klonoar 6y ago
  I agree with this. Verbose code is code you can come back to an understand years down the road. The easiest projects for me to pick back up are the ones I wrote in Objective-C, hands down.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    >Verbose code is code you can come back to an understand years down the road. For ObjC, "verbose code" means "code you can come back to years down the road and hope there's still a manual to translate those message argument names into whatever current programming terminology uses".
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Thankfully, in computer science terms like "array" and "string" still mean what they did many years ago.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        It's not about "array" or string". [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(appDidBecomeActive:) name:NSApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification object:[NSApplication sharedApplication]]; can you explain to me what any of those terms mean without looking a fairly extensive reference manual?
        grzm 6y ago
        At that level you're talking about framework api's (in this case NextStep and derivatives), not the language itself. Drop me into some Haskell or Java or OCaml or Python or Ruby framework, I'm going to have to reach for a reference as well. It's not uncommon to conflate Objective-C conversationally with its most common use case, but Objective-C is not NextStep and other Apple-ecosystem friends.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        Entirely fair.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        Sure, putting on my layman hat: "Add the observer 'self' to some centralized place get a notification of some kind for when the app becomes active. Something to do with a 'shared application' and a 'selector', maybe they are some additional context?" Of course, the latter two are things you'd know if you have used Objective-C even a little bit, with the former being a fairly standard nomenclature for a global and the latter being a crucial part of the language.
        mpweiher 6y ago
        Yep. AppKit has this concept called a Notification Center, which, duh, sends notifications. You want to observe the notification called NSApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification. The way you want to observe this notification is by being sent the message * appDidBecomeActive:. The "object:" parameter tends to be nil, so I did actually have to look that up: it means I only want to receive this particular notification when sent by that object. It is almost certainly redundant in this case, because nobody else has any business sending NSApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification, and it is usually precisely what you do not* want, hence it is usually nil. Anyway: [prefix stringByAppendingString:suffix]; [dictionary objectForKey:key]; In the old NeXTstep days, before our editors had code completion and other conveniences, you could very often just type a phrase describing the operation you wanted and magically the code would compile and do what you expected. Hard to both describe and probably believe if you haven't experienced it yourself.
jfb 6y ago
I loved the idea that the OOP world and the C worlds were syntactically different. It made the language significantly more elegant than C++, which doesn't even take into account the beauty of its Smalltalk message passing semantics.

by mojuba 6y ago

_qulr 6y ago

> ObjC is a "child" of the 1980's when verbosity was considered a merit and a norm in programming. It's still considered a merit by some.

Klonoar 6y ago
I agree with this. Verbose code is code you can come back to an understand years down the road. The easiest projects for me to pick back up are the ones I wrote in Objective-C, hands down.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  >Verbose code is code you can come back to an understand years down the road. For ObjC, "verbose code" means "code you can come back to years down the road and hope there's still a manual to translate those message argument names into whatever current programming terminology uses".
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Thankfully, in computer science terms like "array" and "string" still mean what they did many years ago.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      It's not about "array" or string". [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(appDidBecomeActive:) name:NSApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification object:[NSApplication sharedApplication]]; can you explain to me what any of those terms mean without looking a fairly extensive reference manual?
      - grzm 6y ago
        At that level you're talking about framework api's (in this case NextStep and derivatives), not the language itself. Drop me into some Haskell or Java or OCaml or Python or Ruby framework, I'm going to have to reach for a reference as well. It's not uncommon to conflate Objective-C conversationally with its most common use case, but Objective-C is not NextStep and other Apple-ecosystem friends.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        Entirely fair.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Sure, putting on my layman hat: "Add the observer 'self' to some centralized place get a notification of some kind for when the app becomes active. Something to do with a 'shared application' and a 'selector', maybe they are some additional context?" Of course, the latter two are things you'd know if you have used Objective-C even a little bit, with the former being a fairly standard nomenclature for a global and the latter being a crucial part of the language.
      - mpweiher 6y ago
        Yep. AppKit has this concept called a Notification Center, which, duh, sends notifications. You want to observe the notification called NSApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification. The way you want to observe this notification is by being sent the message * appDidBecomeActive:. The "object:" parameter tends to be nil, so I did actually have to look that up: it means I only want to receive this particular notification when sent by that object. It is almost certainly redundant in this case, because nobody else has any business sending NSApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification, and it is usually precisely what you do not* want, hence it is usually nil. Anyway: [prefix stringByAppendingString:suffix]; [dictionary objectForKey:key]; In the old NeXTstep days, before our editors had code completion and other conveniences, you could very often just type a phrase describing the operation you wanted and magically the code would compile and do what you expected. Hard to both describe and probably believe if you haven't experienced it yourself.

jfb 6y ago

I loved the idea that the OOP world and the C worlds were syntactically different. It made the language significantly more elegant than C++, which doesn't even take into account the beauty of its Smalltalk message passing semantics.