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I am no C++ lover, but the success of Obj C is directly tied to iOS, and the success of iOS is directly tied to the iPhone. The iPhone made VB6 developers lear

I am no C++ lover, but the success of Obj C is directly tied to iOS, and the success of iOS is directly tied to the iPhone. The iPhone made VB6 developers learn Obj C. It was a seismic change.

diogenes4 3y ago
> but the success of Obj C is directly tied to iOS That doesn't explain the massive gap between objective-c's invention and the invention of ios/iphone. There's clearly more to the narrative than that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sjm-lbm 3y ago
  I feel like it is the opposite - Objective-C existed for more than a decade in realtive obscurity, and quite suddenly became very widely used when a new and popular computing platform forced developers to start using it. IMHO, the massive gap supports the idea that iOS is the main driver of Objective-C popularity.
- pcl 3y ago
  Quite a lot of NeXT was ObjC (and ObjC++ -- eek!). Apple bought NeXT; the NeXT team begat Mac OS X; Mac OS X thus ended up being ObjC-heavy. When Apple build the iPhone, they used their Mac OS X know-how to build a new-but-familiar operating system, and they of course used Objective C. The iPhone was a massive success, and the native development language for it was Objective C, so when they opened up the platform to third-party developers, Objective C was all of a sudden an overnight success!
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    > and they of course used Objective C. Kind of, they also introduced Java as OS X system language alternative, with a Objective-C runtime interop, as they were uncertaint that the Mac OS developer community, raised in Object Pascal and C++, were that keen in adopting Objective-C. Java as official OS X language only got deprecated after it was clear the Mac OS developer community was keen in adopting Objective-C. Also the Objective-C driver framework from NeXTSTEP was rewritten in an C++ subset, based on COM's design.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    OS X being a success let the iPhone be built six years later. That may be only a little over a quarter of the history at Apple now but thats the end of the beginning.

I am no C++ lover, but the success of Obj C is directly tied to iOS, and the success of iOS is directly tied to the iPhone. The iPhone made VB6 developers learn Obj C. It was a seismic change.

diogenes4 3y ago

> but the success of Obj C is directly tied to iOS That doesn't explain the massive gap between objective-c's invention and the invention of ios/iphone. There's clearly more to the narrative than that.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sjm-lbm 3y ago
I feel like it is the opposite - Objective-C existed for more than a decade in realtive obscurity, and quite suddenly became very widely used when a new and popular computing platform forced developers to start using it. IMHO, the massive gap supports the idea that iOS is the main driver of Objective-C popularity.
pcl 3y ago
Quite a lot of NeXT was ObjC (and ObjC++ -- eek!). Apple bought NeXT; the NeXT team begat Mac OS X; Mac OS X thus ended up being ObjC-heavy. When Apple build the iPhone, they used their Mac OS X know-how to build a new-but-familiar operating system, and they of course used Objective C. The iPhone was a massive success, and the native development language for it was Objective C, so when they opened up the platform to third-party developers, Objective C was all of a sudden an overnight success!
- pjmlp 3y ago
  > and they of course used Objective C. Kind of, they also introduced Java as OS X system language alternative, with a Objective-C runtime interop, as they were uncertaint that the Mac OS developer community, raised in Object Pascal and C++, were that keen in adopting Objective-C. Java as official OS X language only got deprecated after it was clear the Mac OS developer community was keen in adopting Objective-C. Also the Objective-C driver framework from NeXTSTEP was rewritten in an C++ subset, based on COM's design.
- hinkley 3y ago
  OS X being a success let the iPhone be built six years later. That may be only a little over a quarter of the history at Apple now but thats the end of the beginning.