4 ms·

Great piece of hacking. Can't wait to see what kinds of amazing things develop from such a simple addition to C.

jrockway 17y ago
I am confused as to what is amazing here. GTK+ has had its own C-based OO system for years, and it doesn't require any extensions. (It is better in some ways and worse in some ways than the system described in the article.) Honestly though, if your problem is complicated enough to need objects and blocks, and you are using C, you probably picked the wrong language. C is for the critical sections of video decoders, not for entire applications.
- swannodette 17y ago
  Er. While I don't think that all applications should be constructed using C (I'm a fan of Clojure, JS, Python), clearly Apple'c choice of going with C (or a minor variation of C, Objective-C) has paid off in spades. By innovating on C they have a fairly expressive and extremely performant application language. By adding blocks Apple has added a useful higher level construct as well as an excellent tool when writing concurrent applications without the burden of locks. Considering the fact that the iPhone is largely built on C, I would hardly call it the "wrong language for entire applications".
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Wow, that's some pretty tasty kool aid there... One product didn't fail from using C, so it's a good idea in general? I think the iPhone's success is due to marketing, exploiting developer's existing knowledge, and good libraries... not the use of C.
    - swannodette 17y ago
      If by one product you mean every machine running OS X - 40 million phones plus 10-20 million computers (if not much more) I'd say that's pretty tasty kool aid. In anycase it doesn't sound like you've done much Mac OS X programming, so you're just blowing smoke.
      - jrockway 17y ago
        I just don't buy the argument that users == good software. See also: PHP. Anyway, there's no point in arguing about this if you aren't going to say anything technical. OS X has users; yeah, I know. That doesn't say anything about Objective C other than that it is minimally effective. (I use an OS written in C. The programs crash all the time for no reason.)
        dchest 17y ago
        Sorry for a personal note, but... "C is for the critical sections of video decoders, not for entire applications?" PHP is bad software? And you are the one who calls others kool-aid drinkers here? In my opinion, these are absolute statements that have no substance.
        jrockway 17y ago
        OK, but it only means that you don't know much about C or PHP.

I am confused as to what is amazing here. GTK+ has had its own C-based OO system for years, and it doesn't require any extensions. (It is better in some ways and worse in some ways than the system described in the article.) Honestly though, if your problem is complicated enough to need objects and blocks, and you are using C, you probably picked the wrong language. C is for the critical sections of video decoders, not for entire applications.

swannodette 17y ago
Er. While I don't think that all applications should be constructed using C (I'm a fan of Clojure, JS, Python), clearly Apple'c choice of going with C (or a minor variation of C, Objective-C) has paid off in spades. By innovating on C they have a fairly expressive and extremely performant application language. By adding blocks Apple has added a useful higher level construct as well as an excellent tool when writing concurrent applications without the burden of locks. Considering the fact that the iPhone is largely built on C, I would hardly call it the "wrong language for entire applications".
- jrockway 17y ago
  Wow, that's some pretty tasty kool aid there... One product didn't fail from using C, so it's a good idea in general? I think the iPhone's success is due to marketing, exploiting developer's existing knowledge, and good libraries... not the use of C.
  - swannodette 17y ago
    If by one product you mean every machine running OS X - 40 million phones plus 10-20 million computers (if not much more) I'd say that's pretty tasty kool aid. In anycase it doesn't sound like you've done much Mac OS X programming, so you're just blowing smoke.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      I just don't buy the argument that users == good software. See also: PHP. Anyway, there's no point in arguing about this if you aren't going to say anything technical. OS X has users; yeah, I know. That doesn't say anything about Objective C other than that it is minimally effective. (I use an OS written in C. The programs crash all the time for no reason.)
      - dchest 17y ago
        Sorry for a personal note, but... "C is for the critical sections of video decoders, not for entire applications?" PHP is bad software? And you are the one who calls others kool-aid drinkers here? In my opinion, these are absolute statements that have no substance.
        jrockway 17y ago
        OK, but it only means that you don't know much about C or PHP.