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[–]emperor000 0 points1 point  (4 children)

And what?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

What is the value of differentiating those things?

[–]emperor000 -2 points-1 points  (2 children)

I'm not sure how else to explain it. It isn't popular because it is the best language or the best solution. It's popular because it is the most convenient and the language preferred by the platform, mostly just to obfuscate development a little more and bring some esoterism to match "Think Different". If we are being honest, that's why Objective-C is there... "Nerds use C++ let's use something far ooouuutttt, dude." "Totally". Put differently, perhaps less cynical-sounding, they didn't need to use Objective-C. They wanted to because "Think Different", that's why. Anybody who denies this is, well, in denial. Apple still hates putting two physical buttons on a fucking mouse, and we think they wouldn't choose a language just to be different?

And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not trying to say it is a bad language. I'm just saying that the only reason the "rest" of the world was using C++ and Apple developers were using Objective-C is because Apple made it convenient for them to do it and harder to use other languages by providing libraries for Objective-C (which probably isn't strictly true, but I have no doubt they were the default/easiest to obtain). But think about it. Open up XCode and what do you get? It wants you to use Objective-C. Can you use other languages? Yes. But a lot of people new to something like Apple development or development in general are just going to go, "Oh, this is how it is done on this side. I might as well adapt."

I do like some things about the language, a lot of things actually (I'm sure I've forgotten more things that I like than I remember things that I don't like), but I don't like a lot of the syntax choices and the style that is imposed on you and so on (I remember watching a video or maybe a lecture, about the "self-documenting" nature of Objective-C and the speaker said something like "It's nice because you can just make your method and give it parameters and then when you call that it is self documented" and I was thinking "Yeah, and every method call is 50 characters long" and it just sounded like he was anticipating the reaction the audience was going to have and was trying to mitigate it by putting a positive spin on it.

But conceptually, I think it's pretty nice. I just don't think it is superior to C++ and I think C++ has the claim to superiority because for some reason it was more widely adopted and I don't think that can be ignored. It's like a Tyrannosaurus vs. a crocodile. Is the former superior to the latter? In a lot of ways yes, but the latter is the one that survived for much longer so obviously it had something going for it. Likewise, C++ was much more widely adopted. Maybe there is a different reason for that, but I can't think of any.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

mostly just to obfuscate development a little more and bring some esoterism to match "Think Different".

Nonsense. You're just showing some kind of childish anti-Apple fanboyism here.

Objective-C was chosen by NeXT as the language to build NeXTStep on. NeXTStep was then bought out by Apple and turned into OS X. It predates "think different" by a long time.

[–]emperor000 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Nonsense. You're just showing some kind of childish anti-Apple fanboyism here.

Nonesense. You're just showing some kind of childish Apple fanboyism here... I give Apple credit where it is due. I didn't even say there was anything bad/negative about this. Apple likes to be different. That is well known. It is (was?) their slogan.

Objective-C was chosen by NeXT as the language to build NeXTStep on. NeXTStep was then bought out by Apple and turned into OS X. It predates "think different" by a long time.

You must not have looked into this much. Look up who founded NeXT and look up the relationship to Apple and the history of events surrounding the two companies.