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Objective-C Enters Top Ten In Language Popularity
bonch writes "Objective-C has entered the top 10 of the Tiobe Programming Community Index. Last year, it was at #39. The huge jump is attributed to its use in iPhone and iPad development. C, of which Objective-C is a strict superset, has reclaimed the #1 spot from Java, which slides to #2. Tiobe also explains how it determines its rankings."
On the higher end platforms, this is true. Projects based on ARM, PowerPC, Infineon Tri-Core, etc projects are definately using a higher level of abstraction, with more developers programming at those levels, and a small number working in device drivers and board-support packages. \ But the flipside is that intellegence is being distributed into lots of devices (automotive being the best example, but also appliances, utility meters, medical devices, etc). Most of these run on small, self-contained micros which cost only a few dollars. C is far and away the language of choice on these platforms. Developers with the knowledge to allow you to get every last drop of performance out of a $2.37 micro, so you don't have to buy the $2.52 one, are in great demand. When you build 100,000 of something, you can afford some up-front development cost to save $.15
They do, but if you want to use any of the functions for things like, say, UI, you need to use Objective-C at some point because their API is only in Objective-C.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
I think you must be confused. That would be pretty hard to do, since Objective C is a superset of C! In any case, you're explicitly wrong:
The clause, section 3.3.3, now reads:
"Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)."
(http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/08/apples_iphone_4_sdk_license_bans_flash_java_mono_apps.html)
After about two years programming Obj-C/Cocoa for iPhone apps, I can't believe that this ancient experiment in OOP by an amateur compiler writer is still around. Even though it is nominally a compiled language, all the calls to methods as well as accesses to class properties are interpreted -- the name of the method & its args (args have names) is looked up in a hash table by runtime interpreter to find the address, then to push args and call it, every time you invoke it or access a property. The Obj-C creator basically didn't know how to code linker-loader address binding and so he just left that part for the runtime to decode on millions of end users CPUs from there on. He also didn't know about name mangling, and left that part of his job for the future programmers to do manually (method names and args are explicitly named, so you end up with arg named calling methods like [obj method:arg1 count:count]). For adding properties to a class you have enter the same info in triplicate (variable delcaratiom, property declaratiom, getter/setter declaration), so there is lots of cut & paste, doing by hand the job that compiler should have been doing. The syntax is very clunky, inelegant, uneconomical on programmer's time e.g. requiring lot's of jumping back and forth to match/complete nested square brackets, again simplifying compiler writer's job at the expense of busy work for countless programmers from there on.
In addition to performance & narrow technical issues, the worst fundamental flaw of Obj-C is that the creator didn't understand the value of name space partitioning in OOP (the key tool for building layers of abstraction), so much of that's left largely to programmers, which in Cocoa (API, like win32) resulted in mind-numbing hyper-verbosity, with each class and method names dragging huge repetitive prefixes, with each name spelling out explicitly its whole ancestry back to the stone age. While the Xcode editor is doing heoric efforts in trying to guess what you meant and offer auto-completion of the names as you type, that is the lesser half of the problem (you still end up doing lots of cut & paste of the Cocoa names). The main drawback is when trying to read or modify the code later -- even the simplest algorithm looks complex, any pattern specific to the task at hand is drowned in the mind-numbing sea of repetitive Cocoa verbiage.
In short, horrible language & API framework. Only someone who grew up with this and never knew anything better could love it. Of course, like everything Apple, buried under the idiotic Coca+Obj-C layer, there are gems of genius, especially the extremely well thought out functionality and high performance graphics & animation engines.
But more than the language I enjoy Apple's APIs. They are very consistent and nicely done. I know it wasn't always like this
You might be surprised. Take a look at the OpenStep specification and see how much is familiar. Apple has filed off a few rough edges, but a lot of Cocoa has not changed in almost two decades.
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Steve Jobs had enticed Xerox Parc people to Apple, then NeXT. So this methodology seemed advanced at the time. Also Objective-C was commercially supported while C++ was still basically an open-source hack in the mid-1980s. I was an independent NextStep developer. It was unclear what would win. But as usual cheap and open beat a language you had to buy.
:-), the new MacOS was NexTStep layered with old Mac APIs.
When NeXT took over Apple (oops I mean the other way around
A simple analogy:
"Strict superset" is to "superset" as ">" is to ">=".