7 ms·

So, this is why the abomination that is Obj-C is/was used for iPhone/Mac apps. I can't overstate how much I hate Obj-C. I'm so sooo happy Swift has pretty much

So, this is why the abomination that is Obj-C is/was used for iPhone/Mac apps. I can't overstate how much I hate Obj-C. I'm so sooo happy Swift has pretty much entirely taken over. Side note... I feel similarly about the Java to Kotlin transition. Sooo much better. Although, I don't hate Java NEARLY as much as Obj-C.

ramesh31 2y ago
To each their own. I'm convinced it's just a visceral reaction to the square bracket syntax. Obj-C remains my favorite language of all time (although I haven't written it in years). Having a high level language that allows you to seamlessly drop into C felt like magic.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nullpoint420 2y ago
  I'm using Obj-C for the first time in years for a side project. I'm working on making a Wayland backend for cocotron on Linux. It is magical the way I can just use the C libraries with all the dynamic goodness Obj-C.
  - Longhanks 2y ago
    There's even more magic: You can even use/include/write/mix and match ObjC with C++, within the same source file - C++ classes calling ObjC methods, ObjC methods instantiating C++ classes, it's all there. No other language comes close to this kind of interop with C++ and it is one feature that Swift will never be able to match (albeit intentionally).
    - tambourine_man 2y ago
      https://www.swift.org/documentation/cxx-interop/ https://www.swift.org/documentation/cxx-interop/
      - Longhanks 2y ago
        Yes, there is interop at the linking level. I was however explicitly stating that you can mix and match both ObjC and C++ within the same source files and as long as you don't violate the language rules of one with what's allowed in the other (e.g. giving your ObjC variable the name template), then absolutely any features, even language-wise, are supported. You can have C++ RAII destructors call ObjC methods. You can have C++ classes with an NSArray member. You can have a std::vector as a property of your ObjC class. You can mix and match libdispatch, std::call_once, ObjC blocks and C++ lambdas. No other language comes close to this incredible source-level interop. Here be dragons, but there's also lots of opportunity (and fun, from a programming languace theory perspective).
- itslennysfault 2y ago
  Interesting, I guess that part was missed on me since I only really ever used it for iPhone apps and never really had a need to use C directly. Also, you're 100% right. The square brackets are what immediately repulsed me and continued to befuddle me even after years of experience with it. Also, everything just feels "backwards" to me if that makes any sense. Coming from Java/C#/JavaScript everything just seemed unintuitive to me at all times. Also, I think this was heavily compounded by using xCode which (at the time) was incredibly laggy. So, I'd mess up the Obj-C syntax and the IDE wouldn't tell me for what felt like forever. Often I'd make a change and hit "play" before the syntax highlighting caught up and that always felt infuriating. I last used xCode about 4 years ago and it was still an issue then (even with swift).
  - ramesh31 2y ago
    >"Also, everything just feels "backwards" to me if that makes any sense." Because it is. Obj-C comes from the Smalltalk lineage by way of Alan Kay, using message passing [0] versus method invocation. It's a subtle difference with huge implications to how you design systems. Method invocation won out mostly because of Java and C++, but there was a time it wasn't clear which was the better OO paradigm. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_passing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_passing
    - bunderbunder 2y ago
      Message passing belongs up there with lisp, forth and pure functional programming as paradigms that are worth learning for "the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it." But I often see that my peers in the profession lack the kind of growth mentality that enables a person to see past the alienness of less algol-y languages. Quote from "How To Become a Hacker" by Eric S. Raymond: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
      - em-bee 2y ago
        see my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42132104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42132104 i can't tell the difference and therefore i don't see what profound enlightenment experience i am supposed to have.
- jwells89 2y ago
  For personal use, the only issue I take with Obj-C is how it's considerably less "batteries included" relative to Swift. For collaborative projects on the other hand, it can become a handful to maintain if everybody contributing isn't staying on top of hygiene with null checks, type checks, etc. Swift helps to keep all of that under control.
- cxr 2y ago
  Someone really ought to do an alternative "skin" for Objective-C. That is, define some reversible transformation that can be applied to any Objective-C program that only changes the surface-level details but otherwise results in mapping the exact same program into the later stages of the compiler (and the section of programmers' mental pipeline that comes after the part where their eyeballs and sense of taste are concerned). It's important that the reversible part be adhered to. It's really kind of a bummer that we don't have well-known examples of "skinnable" programming languages already. The closest we get are the ones that let you choose your set of keywords for different locales in case you don't want to work with an English-based PL and those block based languages that let you manipulate them as blocks or edit the textual form. I firmly believe that PL skinning would really benefit so many otherwise worthwhile languages that get short-shrift because of negative reactions to the surface-level details. I'm referring in particular languages like those in the Pascal family. (You could also conceive of e.g. a skin for Golang that doesn't have leading caps be the determiner for whether a function is public or not. There are lots of applications for this, and the variations are a non-issue when you have an ecosystem with strong norms about applying a code formatter (like gofmt), which can dictate the format of the canonical on-disk representation.)
  - Aeglaecia 2y ago
    surely after 20 years this already exists , someone posted a header the other day that makes c syntax python like , macros are enough to accomplish what youre describing? i dont perceive it as efficient to force codebase contributors to relearn their ingrained language syntax , possibly more efficient for those having newly learned a language tho ...
    - cxr 2y ago
      > i dont perceive it as efficient to force codebase contributors to relearn their ingrained language syntax That's why it's important that the transformation be reversible and what the gofmt-like code formatters are for.
  - mpweiher 2y ago
    The Four Stages of Objective-Smalltalk https://blog.metaobject.com/2019/12/the-4-stages-of-objective-smalltalk.html https://blog.metaobject.com/2019/12/the-4-stages-of-objectiv... Its first two stages are just that, but it has moved beyond, for good reasons.
wslh 2y ago
I did a few things in Obj-C and I only regretted the memory handling stuff. I really liked the performance, reflexibility capabilities (reverse engineering classes is almost trivial) and smalltalk like style. I will not choose it for any project but it gives me the taste that there were more options around C/C++
- pjmlp 2y ago
  There has been plenty of options back in the day, it was guaranteed that C and C++ would take over everything as they did during the late 1990's. Even the Object Pascal to C++ transition at Apple was mostly caused by increased UNIX adoption, and Apple programmers wanting to offer similar experiences, thus MPW was born. Same on other platforms, until C and C++ eventually won everywhere, at least until several new kids decided to challenge them in various fronts. One that you seldom see nowadays, outside games, is pure GUI frameworks using C or C++.
mentos 2y ago
Did you start with Swift or Objective-C? I started with Objective-C and loved it but I imagine that wouldn’t have been the case if I started with Swift.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  Same. I realize that Objective-C is dated by contemporary standards. But when I first learned it 20-ish years ago it felt like a superpower. I bet it was even more impressive when it first appeared another 20 years further back. I think that one of the tragedies of older programming languages is that they survive long enough for people to forget the technical - and technological - constraints that influenced their design. Swift is great, but there are reasons why there weren't any Swift-like languages being developed in or around 1984. Similar feelings about Java. It is definitely not my favorite programming language. (I suppose Kotlin isn't either, but it's in the top n.) But it's hard for me to actually hate it. Java walked so that Kotlin could run.
- throwaway655368 2y ago
  I started the iOS development with Objective-C and hated the language. gp's comment is pretty much my feeling as well. I wonder if I'd enjoy Swift so much if it wasn't in contrast to how utterly horrible Objective-C was. These days I still need to revisit legacy Obj-C codebases occasionally or make Obj-C wrappers to interface with C++ code and every time it feels like diving into a cesspit.
- itslennysfault 2y ago
  I was first introduced to Objective-C in 2010 when I worked on my first iPhone app. I've come back to it a half dozen times over the past 15 years since then and always hate it. I only discovered swift a few years ago (when I had to do some iPhone stuff) and was so happy to not need to use Obj-C
incanus77 2y ago
I'm back in Objective-C now for a large mixed codebase for a client and enjoying it. It was my first compiled language starting in 2002 so I've got about equal time with only it as I do with Swift alongside. And I'm spending more time these days in other projects (microcontrollers, mostly) using C so it's a breath of fresh air. I'm finding it generally faster than Swift in Xcode, which is a bonus.
- neverartful 2y ago
  I too am back in Objective-C and being away from it for a long while and I'm also enjoying it. For the most part, I really like Objective-C. I think it's a very pragmatic language. My current project is macOS, but the vast majority of my prior work with Xcode and ObjC was with iOS development.
pjmlp 2y ago
Metal is implemented in a mix of Objective-C (CPU) and C++ (Metal Shaders), Swift only has bindings. Maybe one it they will rewrite the Objective-C, who knows. Kotlin transition is a Google thing, outside Android barely anyone notices that it exists.
- ahoka 2y ago
  “Kotlin transition is a Google thing, outside Android barely anyone notices that it exists.” That’s not true.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    It certainly is, one just needs to check any programming language market share analysis that omits Android deployments. Kotlin hardly does more than 10% of JVM workloads, and it isn't as if any JVM vendor is replacing Java with Kotlin on their JVM implementation. Besides Google with ART, which is anyway not a JVM proper, not fully TCK compliant to start with.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      At least at my company we are increasingly using more and more Kotlin. And that happens in many places. This is Server JVM, not Android. And I know other places too.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Congratulations, you are part of those 10%.
        panick21_ 2y ago
        10% is a large number for a new language on a VM.
        pjmlp 2y ago

ramesh31 2y ago

To each their own. I'm convinced it's just a visceral reaction to the square bracket syntax. Obj-C remains my favorite language of all time (although I haven't written it in years). Having a high level language that allows you to seamlessly drop into C felt like magic.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nullpoint420 2y ago
I'm using Obj-C for the first time in years for a side project. I'm working on making a Wayland backend for cocotron on Linux. It is magical the way I can just use the C libraries with all the dynamic goodness Obj-C.
- Longhanks 2y ago
  There's even more magic: You can even use/include/write/mix and match ObjC with C++, within the same source file - C++ classes calling ObjC methods, ObjC methods instantiating C++ classes, it's all there. No other language comes close to this kind of interop with C++ and it is one feature that Swift will never be able to match (albeit intentionally).
  - tambourine_man 2y ago
    https://www.swift.org/documentation/cxx-interop/ https://www.swift.org/documentation/cxx-interop/
    - Longhanks 2y ago
      Yes, there is interop at the linking level. I was however explicitly stating that you can mix and match both ObjC and C++ within the same source files and as long as you don't violate the language rules of one with what's allowed in the other (e.g. giving your ObjC variable the name template), then absolutely any features, even language-wise, are supported. You can have C++ RAII destructors call ObjC methods. You can have C++ classes with an NSArray member. You can have a std::vector as a property of your ObjC class. You can mix and match libdispatch, std::call_once, ObjC blocks and C++ lambdas. No other language comes close to this incredible source-level interop. Here be dragons, but there's also lots of opportunity (and fun, from a programming languace theory perspective).
itslennysfault 2y ago
Interesting, I guess that part was missed on me since I only really ever used it for iPhone apps and never really had a need to use C directly. Also, you're 100% right. The square brackets are what immediately repulsed me and continued to befuddle me even after years of experience with it. Also, everything just feels "backwards" to me if that makes any sense. Coming from Java/C#/JavaScript everything just seemed unintuitive to me at all times. Also, I think this was heavily compounded by using xCode which (at the time) was incredibly laggy. So, I'd mess up the Obj-C syntax and the IDE wouldn't tell me for what felt like forever. Often I'd make a change and hit "play" before the syntax highlighting caught up and that always felt infuriating. I last used xCode about 4 years ago and it was still an issue then (even with swift).
- ramesh31 2y ago
  >"Also, everything just feels "backwards" to me if that makes any sense." Because it is. Obj-C comes from the Smalltalk lineage by way of Alan Kay, using message passing [0] versus method invocation. It's a subtle difference with huge implications to how you design systems. Method invocation won out mostly because of Java and C++, but there was a time it wasn't clear which was the better OO paradigm. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_passing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_passing
  - bunderbunder 2y ago
    Message passing belongs up there with lisp, forth and pure functional programming as paradigms that are worth learning for "the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it." But I often see that my peers in the profession lack the kind of growth mentality that enables a person to see past the alienness of less algol-y languages. Quote from "How To Become a Hacker" by Eric S. Raymond: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
    - em-bee 2y ago
      see my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42132104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42132104 i can't tell the difference and therefore i don't see what profound enlightenment experience i am supposed to have.
jwells89 2y ago
For personal use, the only issue I take with Obj-C is how it's considerably less "batteries included" relative to Swift. For collaborative projects on the other hand, it can become a handful to maintain if everybody contributing isn't staying on top of hygiene with null checks, type checks, etc. Swift helps to keep all of that under control.
cxr 2y ago
Someone really ought to do an alternative "skin" for Objective-C. That is, define some reversible transformation that can be applied to any Objective-C program that only changes the surface-level details but otherwise results in mapping the exact same program into the later stages of the compiler (and the section of programmers' mental pipeline that comes after the part where their eyeballs and sense of taste are concerned). It's important that the reversible part be adhered to. It's really kind of a bummer that we don't have well-known examples of "skinnable" programming languages already. The closest we get are the ones that let you choose your set of keywords for different locales in case you don't want to work with an English-based PL and those block based languages that let you manipulate them as blocks or edit the textual form. I firmly believe that PL skinning would really benefit so many otherwise worthwhile languages that get short-shrift because of negative reactions to the surface-level details. I'm referring in particular languages like those in the Pascal family. (You could also conceive of e.g. a skin for Golang that doesn't have leading caps be the determiner for whether a function is public or not. There are lots of applications for this, and the variations are a non-issue when you have an ecosystem with strong norms about applying a code formatter (like gofmt), which can dictate the format of the canonical on-disk representation.)
- Aeglaecia 2y ago
  surely after 20 years this already exists , someone posted a header the other day that makes c syntax python like , macros are enough to accomplish what youre describing? i dont perceive it as efficient to force codebase contributors to relearn their ingrained language syntax , possibly more efficient for those having newly learned a language tho ...
  - cxr 2y ago
    > i dont perceive it as efficient to force codebase contributors to relearn their ingrained language syntax That's why it's important that the transformation be reversible and what the gofmt-like code formatters are for.
- mpweiher 2y ago
  The Four Stages of Objective-Smalltalk https://blog.metaobject.com/2019/12/the-4-stages-of-objective-smalltalk.html https://blog.metaobject.com/2019/12/the-4-stages-of-objectiv... Its first two stages are just that, but it has moved beyond, for good reasons.

wslh 2y ago

I did a few things in Obj-C and I only regretted the memory handling stuff. I really liked the performance, reflexibility capabilities (reverse engineering classes is almost trivial) and smalltalk like style. I will not choose it for any project but it gives me the taste that there were more options around C/C++

pjmlp 2y ago
There has been plenty of options back in the day, it was guaranteed that C and C++ would take over everything as they did during the late 1990's. Even the Object Pascal to C++ transition at Apple was mostly caused by increased UNIX adoption, and Apple programmers wanting to offer similar experiences, thus MPW was born. Same on other platforms, until C and C++ eventually won everywhere, at least until several new kids decided to challenge them in various fronts. One that you seldom see nowadays, outside games, is pure GUI frameworks using C or C++.

mentos 2y ago

Did you start with Swift or Objective-C? I started with Objective-C and loved it but I imagine that wouldn’t have been the case if I started with Swift.

bunderbunder 2y ago
Same. I realize that Objective-C is dated by contemporary standards. But when I first learned it 20-ish years ago it felt like a superpower. I bet it was even more impressive when it first appeared another 20 years further back. I think that one of the tragedies of older programming languages is that they survive long enough for people to forget the technical - and technological - constraints that influenced their design. Swift is great, but there are reasons why there weren't any Swift-like languages being developed in or around 1984. Similar feelings about Java. It is definitely not my favorite programming language. (I suppose Kotlin isn't either, but it's in the top n.) But it's hard for me to actually hate it. Java walked so that Kotlin could run.
throwaway655368 2y ago
I started the iOS development with Objective-C and hated the language. gp's comment is pretty much my feeling as well. I wonder if I'd enjoy Swift so much if it wasn't in contrast to how utterly horrible Objective-C was. These days I still need to revisit legacy Obj-C codebases occasionally or make Obj-C wrappers to interface with C++ code and every time it feels like diving into a cesspit.
itslennysfault 2y ago
I was first introduced to Objective-C in 2010 when I worked on my first iPhone app. I've come back to it a half dozen times over the past 15 years since then and always hate it. I only discovered swift a few years ago (when I had to do some iPhone stuff) and was so happy to not need to use Obj-C

incanus77 2y ago

I'm back in Objective-C now for a large mixed codebase for a client and enjoying it. It was my first compiled language starting in 2002 so I've got about equal time with only it as I do with Swift alongside. And I'm spending more time these days in other projects (microcontrollers, mostly) using C so it's a breath of fresh air. I'm finding it generally faster than Swift in Xcode, which is a bonus.

neverartful 2y ago
I too am back in Objective-C and being away from it for a long while and I'm also enjoying it. For the most part, I really like Objective-C. I think it's a very pragmatic language. My current project is macOS, but the vast majority of my prior work with Xcode and ObjC was with iOS development.

pjmlp 2y ago

Metal is implemented in a mix of Objective-C (CPU) and C++ (Metal Shaders), Swift only has bindings. Maybe one it they will rewrite the Objective-C, who knows. Kotlin transition is a Google thing, outside Android barely anyone notices that it exists.

ahoka 2y ago
“Kotlin transition is a Google thing, outside Android barely anyone notices that it exists.” That’s not true.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  It certainly is, one just needs to check any programming language market share analysis that omits Android deployments. Kotlin hardly does more than 10% of JVM workloads, and it isn't as if any JVM vendor is replacing Java with Kotlin on their JVM implementation. Besides Google with ART, which is anyway not a JVM proper, not fully TCK compliant to start with.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    At least at my company we are increasingly using more and more Kotlin. And that happens in many places. This is Server JVM, not Android. And I know other places too.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Congratulations, you are part of those 10%.
      - panick21_ 2y ago
        10% is a large number for a new language on a VM.
        pjmlp 2y ago