subjective impressions of Objective-C

After I read a comment on some blog expressing high praise for the features of Objective-C, I've been going through some introductory materials found by Google. I must say that the experience has been eerie. It's almost as if someone was storing C and Smalltalk on the same volume, there was some corruption, and the recovered file(s) ended up mashed together. I confess to knowing about as much about Smalltalk as Objective-C (that is, close to nil - HA, I made a funny!), but the resemblance is obvious. I think I have a clearer understanding of how people can assert() that Java is C++ going back to its Smalltalk roots, but not quite getting there.

First, the parts I like. The Categories capability is intriguing. It reminds me of the roles that are part of Perl 6. I also like the choices the language offers: either use objects with a type of "id" and send messages to whatever object you like, or use static object types and Protocols when that level of dynamic behavior is undesireable or unnecessary. Even better, Objective-C inherits the high-performing "close-to-the-metal" compilation of C, with an extra library that handles the fancy object tricks at runtime. I kept wondering why I hadn't heard more about this language, and why it didn't seem to be in more widespread use (by the way, I own nothing made by Apple).

Then my reading uncovered several justifiable reasons why Objective-C didn't hit the big time, at least on the scale of Java or C++. It doesn't have a true standard, which means that the chance of multiple entities implementing it is correspondingly lower. On the other hand, one open implementation can act as a de facto standard, so this criticism may not apply to GNUstep. Another problem for me is the syntax. Punctuation ([ : - +) is used in ways that I've never seen before. Perl is worse in this way, and I suppose that programmers who seriously use Objective-C become accustomed. Something else that bugs me is Objective-C's strong association with specific framework(s). A standard library is fine, of course, in order for a language to be useful, but I expect there to be competing libraries or toolkits for anything more complicated. I also wish that Objective-C was implemented on a common platform (Parrot, CLR, JVM), which would get rid of this issue. But then Objective-C would be competing with languages that have dynamically-typed OO as well as convenient syntax niceties that elevate the programmer above C's level. Frankly, although Objective-C is fascinating to study, I don't think it fits any important niches anymore, except possibly the niche currently occupied by C++. If you need Smalltalk-like abilities, use Smalltalk. If you just want to crunch numbers or strings at a high level of abstraction, use OCaml or Haskell. If you deeply need code that performs well, use C with a good compiler or even assembly. If you just need to solve a common problem, use a scripting language.

Here are some of the links I found:

• Love, Hate and Objective-C. This is a balanced evaluation from someone who knows much more about Objective-C than me.
• Python-Objective-C bridge. Any project that bridges languages is worth a gold star.
• Objective-C Beginner's Guide. Nice page that just shows a snippet of Objective-C example code for each signficant feature, followed by an explanation of the snippet. Every language should have a page like this, but I can see how it might be too terse for some people.
• Apple documentation for Objective-C. (pdf) All you need or want to know, from the source. I didn't read the entire thing.
• Behind the Scenes of Objective-C 2.0. What the upcoming version of Objective-C will have. I can't imagine working without garbage collection.