> I guess ObjC is unrelated to the macOS of olde, but does it also encourage handles somehow? No, in some ways it allows memory optimization (1. since there is

> I guess ObjC is unrelated to the macOS of olde, but does it also encourage handles somehow? No, in some ways it allows memory optimization (1. since there is no inlining, clients don't know the internals of data structures, so they're free to change behind your back 2. tagged pointer objects) and in some ways it disallows it (since all objects are heap allocations i.e. there are no value types, object trees can't be "flattened" the way C++ sometimes can). > I understand that one reason apple silicon is performant is that it has specific fast handling of typical ObjC references? It's just ARMv8. There are some features like TBI, but the security improvements are more interesting than the performance improvements.