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Comparing Jimi Hendrix to Objective-C is like comparing Ken Thompson to a guitar. Musician, instrument. Painter, brushes. Besides, as far as I know, Objective-

Comparing Jimi Hendrix to Objective-C is like comparing Ken Thompson to a guitar. Musician, instrument. Painter, brushes. Besides, as far as I know, Objective-C only ever gained traction within the very narrow realm of MacOS and iOS application development, and has since been mostly supplanted by Swift in both of those use cases. That's hardly comparable to the enduring, cross-cultural influence of Hendrix. If we're making weird anthropomorphic analogies, I'd argue Objective-C is more like Sleep, People Under the Stairs, or maybe The Replacements. Enormously important within the scope of their own subculture.

karmakaze 2y ago
Analogies aside, Objective-C gave rise to NeXT and Lotus Improv on the NeXT which were the greatest things. I'm not particularly attached to the language but wonder why we don't have nice things like those anymore.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  Even on MacOS. I was playing with XCode recently (I don't normally do Mac development as such even though I use Macs as my primary computers) and was disappointed to see that they've gotten rid of Interface Builder as far as I can tell, as that was one of the greatest things modern MacOS inherited from NextStep.
  - fzzzy 2y ago
    Interface Builder has just been integrated into Xcode for a very long time now.
    - jhbadger 2y ago
      I don't claim to be an expert on Xcode but when I was playing with Xcode 15 the UI editor seemed nothing like Interface Builder -- not only from NextStep but even from earlier versions of Xcode.
      - robinsonrc 2y ago
        You may have been working in a SwiftUI project which does things differently from the older IB ways
    - karmakaze 2y ago
      Interface Builder was the coolest thing, especially its struts-n-springs-constraints. Xcode is in contrast among the worst visual builder I've used, everything feels so tedious. (AutoLayout is the real thing and Xcode's UI feels 2nd class.) Did they also get rid of those connections between code and widgets? That would make sense as it's such a lone mechanism to be foreign to most now.
      - galad87 2y ago
        Struts-n-springs-constraints and outlets are still available.
    - jwells89 2y ago
      I wish it hadn’t been. It’s been considerably more slow and buggy ever since the merge. Pre-merge I loved using it, but post-merge I avoid it in favor of code, except for Mac projects which is where it’s least buggy.
  - ryukoposting 2y ago
    I guess I'm too young to understand the phrase "Even on MacOS" here, as the developer experience I personally know on MacOS is worse than the one on Windows in a variety of ways, and it's not a high bar.
- leetrout 2y ago
  Can you further detail the "nice things"? Is it "why is electron the easiest way to ship desktop software on every platform?" Or something else? A quality without a name?
- st3fan 2y ago
  Nice things like nil pointers and a foundation of C.
  - pavlov 2y ago
    The C foundation was absolutely essential for doing real-world useful things in Objective-C. Writing a GUI image editor? Your underlying pixel buffer types can be plain C and you can use all the C libraries that exist. No cost of bridging those data types to the late-bound object-oriented Obj-C world where your GUI is implemented, and no constricting interface hoops like Java Native Interface. If your GUI code needed to read a pixel, you could just do C pointer arithmetic right there. And the same goes for audio, networking, and anything else you can imagine on a desktop where all the underlying stuff is C.
- ck45 2y ago
  And don't forget WorldWideWeb, the first web client created by Tim Berners-Lee
chipdart 2y ago
> Besides, as far as I know, Objective-C only ever gained traction within the very narrow realm of MacOS and iOS application development, and has since been mostly supplanted by Swift in both of those use cases. I would take a step further and point out that Objective-C was forced upon developers by Apple as the official tech stack to develop software targeting macOS and iOS. If that was not the case, I seriously doubt it would have gained any traction at all.
- F3nd0 2y ago
  Isn't that how it usually works with any given platform? Developing most of it with a given toolset which is then regarded as 'natural' or 'official', while developing for it with other tools becomes less viable or desirable due to lack of work and official support?
- spacemadness 2y ago
  The way some of my colleagues gush about objC, I wonder. I honestly can’t stand objC. This is coming from someone who coded in C for many years. Swift is such a huge improvement.
- mpweiher 2y ago
  > Objective-C was forced upon developers by Apple That turns out not to be the case. In fact Apple initially pointed developers at everything but Objective-C. 1. Carbon ("all life forms are based on Carbon") 2. Java. Remember all the sample code in Java? 3. "Modern syntax". All these quickly fell to the wayside, as people overcame their mostly superficial angst ("uuuh, square brackets and keywords, how will I ever survive") and saw that Objective-C delivers the goods.
heresie-dabord 2y ago
> comparing Y to X is like comparing... The OP's simile is unintelligible and unconstructive. Now whether we can determine just how unintelligible and unconstructive it is by offering Yet Another Faulty Comparison is left as an exercise for the reader. ^_^

karmakaze 2y ago

Analogies aside, Objective-C gave rise to NeXT and Lotus Improv on the NeXT which were the greatest things. I'm not particularly attached to the language but wonder why we don't have nice things like those anymore.

jhbadger 2y ago
Even on MacOS. I was playing with XCode recently (I don't normally do Mac development as such even though I use Macs as my primary computers) and was disappointed to see that they've gotten rid of Interface Builder as far as I can tell, as that was one of the greatest things modern MacOS inherited from NextStep.
- fzzzy 2y ago
  Interface Builder has just been integrated into Xcode for a very long time now.
  - jhbadger 2y ago
    I don't claim to be an expert on Xcode but when I was playing with Xcode 15 the UI editor seemed nothing like Interface Builder -- not only from NextStep but even from earlier versions of Xcode.
    - robinsonrc 2y ago
      You may have been working in a SwiftUI project which does things differently from the older IB ways
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    Interface Builder was the coolest thing, especially its struts-n-springs-constraints. Xcode is in contrast among the worst visual builder I've used, everything feels so tedious. (AutoLayout is the real thing and Xcode's UI feels 2nd class.) Did they also get rid of those connections between code and widgets? That would make sense as it's such a lone mechanism to be foreign to most now.
    - galad87 2y ago
      Struts-n-springs-constraints and outlets are still available.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    I wish it hadn’t been. It’s been considerably more slow and buggy ever since the merge. Pre-merge I loved using it, but post-merge I avoid it in favor of code, except for Mac projects which is where it’s least buggy.
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  I guess I'm too young to understand the phrase "Even on MacOS" here, as the developer experience I personally know on MacOS is worse than the one on Windows in a variety of ways, and it's not a high bar.
leetrout 2y ago
Can you further detail the "nice things"? Is it "why is electron the easiest way to ship desktop software on every platform?" Or something else? A quality without a name?
st3fan 2y ago
Nice things like nil pointers and a foundation of C.
- pavlov 2y ago
  The C foundation was absolutely essential for doing real-world useful things in Objective-C. Writing a GUI image editor? Your underlying pixel buffer types can be plain C and you can use all the C libraries that exist. No cost of bridging those data types to the late-bound object-oriented Obj-C world where your GUI is implemented, and no constricting interface hoops like Java Native Interface. If your GUI code needed to read a pixel, you could just do C pointer arithmetic right there. And the same goes for audio, networking, and anything else you can imagine on a desktop where all the underlying stuff is C.
ck45 2y ago
And don't forget WorldWideWeb, the first web client created by Tim Berners-Lee

chipdart 2y ago

> Besides, as far as I know, Objective-C only ever gained traction within the very narrow realm of MacOS and iOS application development, and has since been mostly supplanted by Swift in both of those use cases. I would take a step further and point out that Objective-C was forced upon developers by Apple as the official tech stack to develop software targeting macOS and iOS. If that was not the case, I seriously doubt it would have gained any traction at all.

F3nd0 2y ago
Isn't that how it usually works with any given platform? Developing most of it with a given toolset which is then regarded as 'natural' or 'official', while developing for it with other tools becomes less viable or desirable due to lack of work and official support?
spacemadness 2y ago
The way some of my colleagues gush about objC, I wonder. I honestly can’t stand objC. This is coming from someone who coded in C for many years. Swift is such a huge improvement.
mpweiher 2y ago
> Objective-C was forced upon developers by Apple That turns out not to be the case. In fact Apple initially pointed developers at everything but Objective-C. 1. Carbon ("all life forms are based on Carbon") 2. Java. Remember all the sample code in Java? 3. "Modern syntax". All these quickly fell to the wayside, as people overcame their mostly superficial angst ("uuuh, square brackets and keywords, how will I ever survive") and saw that Objective-C delivers the goods.

heresie-dabord 2y ago

> comparing Y to X is like comparing... The OP's simile is unintelligible and unconstructive. Now whether we can determine just how unintelligible and unconstructive it is by offering Yet Another Faulty Comparison is left as an exercise for the reader. ^_^