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So is Objective-C kinda going away after all? If I did a greenfield iOS or OSX app would it be malpractice to do it in Objective-C? Because I actually adore t

So is Objective-C kinda going away after all? If I did a greenfield iOS or OSX app would it be malpractice to do it in Objective-C? Because I actually adore that language. Haven’t used it lately, but I do love it.

jamesfinlayson 5y ago
I thought Objective C was dead - it'll still be supported (probably) but https://developer.apple.com/ https://developer.apple.com/ calls out Swift a lot but makes no mention of Objective C.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Then Metal is dead as well.
johnthuss 5y ago
Yes, you should learn Swift. The naming of things in Apple's APIs still comes through strong in Swift (due to named parameters), so it feels at home to programmers who were familiar with ObjC. Swift protects you from many crashes/bugs with its null safety and more strict compiler. In ObjC many clear coding mistakes are only marked with warnings, which is not helpful. Apple has clearly moved to Swift for all future development of new libraries, etc. So it would be foolish to stay in the past.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Metal is a mix of Objective-C and C++ (MSL C++14 dialect). So it will stay around for a while.
  - comex 5y ago
    What in MSL is based on Objective-C?
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Nothing and I haven't said otherwise. MSL is a C++14 dialect, while everything else in Metal is Objective-C. Metal demos done in Swift make use of language bindings.
Apocryphon 5y ago
So long as interest in the language remains and Apple keeps pumping out incidental improvements to it as they update Swift, it will never be gone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28623128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28623128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28582752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28582752 That, and the banal fact that large corporations including Facebook, Google, Netflix, Snap, Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify, Flipboard, and Apple itself continue to have large amounts of legacy code in Objective-C.
andrekandre 5y ago
> So is Objective-C kinda going away after all? did c and c++ go away when obj-c landed? (my guess is, obj-c will be the same: not the main one, but still around for where its appropriate)
akmarinov 5y ago
Looks like it, Apple has been pumping out new frameworks that you just can’t use from Objective-C

jamesfinlayson 5y ago

I thought Objective C was dead - it'll still be supported (probably) but https://developer.apple.com/ https://developer.apple.com/ calls out Swift a lot but makes no mention of Objective C.

pjmlp 5y ago
Then Metal is dead as well.

johnthuss 5y ago

Yes, you should learn Swift. The naming of things in Apple's APIs still comes through strong in Swift (due to named parameters), so it feels at home to programmers who were familiar with ObjC. Swift protects you from many crashes/bugs with its null safety and more strict compiler. In ObjC many clear coding mistakes are only marked with warnings, which is not helpful. Apple has clearly moved to Swift for all future development of new libraries, etc. So it would be foolish to stay in the past.

pjmlp 5y ago
Metal is a mix of Objective-C and C++ (MSL C++14 dialect). So it will stay around for a while.
- comex 5y ago
  What in MSL is based on Objective-C?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Nothing and I haven't said otherwise. MSL is a C++14 dialect, while everything else in Metal is Objective-C. Metal demos done in Swift make use of language bindings.

Apocryphon 5y ago

So long as interest in the language remains and Apple keeps pumping out incidental improvements to it as they update Swift, it will never be gone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28623128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28623128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28582752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28582752 That, and the banal fact that large corporations including Facebook, Google, Netflix, Snap, Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify, Flipboard, and Apple itself continue to have large amounts of legacy code in Objective-C.

andrekandre 5y ago

> So is Objective-C kinda going away after all? did c and c++ go away when obj-c landed? (my guess is, obj-c will be the same: not the main one, but still around for where its appropriate)

akmarinov 5y ago

Looks like it, Apple has been pumping out new frameworks that you just can’t use from Objective-C