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Sony Adopts Objective-C and GNUstep Frameworks
EMB Numbers writes "Sony has revealed that the new SNAP development environment for 'consumer electronics' is based on Objective-C and the open source GNUstep implementation of Apple's Openstep spec. While Apple has continued to update their specification in the form of Cocoa and Mac OS X, GNUstep has preserved the original standard. Anyone familiar with Cocoa Touch and iOS will feel right at home developing for Sony. There may even be some source code compatibility between the platforms. The world continues to chase apple — probably for the better."
Or more accurately, One foreign company adopts a compiler.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Qt is LGPL, it's not "owned" by Nokia - certainly not in the way Apple controls Cocoa and GNUstep strives to keep up.
That said, as far as I am concerned GNUstep is at least the second best choice of the two / it's nice to see that their efforts might finally give something big.
One that hath name thou can not otter
As others have mentioned in the comments, Objective-C was one of Apple's poorer decisions
I suppose you have a significantly better (simpler and more flexible) compiled OO language suitable for system-level programming up your sleeve, when you talk like that.
Ezekiel 23:20
Actually, Objective-C's performance is very very good, and verbosity is absolutely a good thing. The problems I might raise with objective-c would involve it's highly dynamic nature, and lack of a decent type system, not it's implementation's speed or it's code clarity, which are both positive advantages for it!
Cocoa is also one of the absolute cleanest application development frameworks out there by far (CocoaTouch improves on it a chunk though purely by binning a lot of old cruft), so I'd say sony made a bloody good choice.
To be fair it's not that there's any inherent problem with Objective-C, that much is pretty well demonstrated by the countless great applications built on it for Apple's platforms. The real issue is really that it's like the neanderthal of languages- it evolved from C in parallel with languages like C++ and Java, but in doing so has ended up rather more ugly, and whilst it has some good bits, it also has bad bits like a lack of namespaces and operator overloading (although of course these issues aren't limited to Objective-C, Java lacks operator overloading too for example) but the combination of what is frankly a quite horrible syntax and these missing features means it's essentially just a poor man's C++. The obscurity of the syntax just builds an extra barrier that's really unnecessary in this day and age- every developer just about is comfortable with C++ style syntax so why waste time with a language syntax that's so obscure when you can just have one that people can jump straight into? This issue spills over into cross platform development somewhat in that it's much more of a headache to development multiple versions of a program when you're facing two very different sets of syntax more so than porting between programs with similar syntax.
So yeah, certainly it "works", but there's really just no point in it when other languages work just as well without the added headache of lack of things like namespaces and an obscure syntax. There are bigger issues with the development tools and libraries themselves, but really that's something else, my comment was really targetted at the language- effectively Objective-C is different without bringing anything worthwhile to the table- at least with some other languages that have more obscure syntax they also often have a redeeming feature, like say being a functional programming language for example.
I think the extent to which the syntax is a barrier to entry for new developers is exaggerated. Square brackets denote method calls - easy. It might take a wee while before typing out method declarations in the right order is second nature, but I think that's acceptable because you gain (forced) named parameters.
I like the fact that the syntax is different, because the chances of getting caught out are reduced. There are already too many languages with similar but subtly different syntaxes out there.
"The world continues to chase apple -- probably for the better."
When did Slashdot become a forum for apple fanboys?
C++ it like a swiss army knife with a multitude of razor-sharp blades and attachments. It can do whatever you want to do, and it can do it pretty cleverly, but if you don't know the tool really, really well, you're going to end up missing fingers :D
Actually, it's the other way around, C++ is the poor mans objC. Unlike C++ it's a C superset, and way back with NeXT it was demonstrably leading to fewer bugs and less developer time on the same job. Apple has made some poor decisions in its role as de facto shepherd but the language is solid in its role.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It has been a few years since it migrated from a Linux fanboy-only site to a more democratic one. Today, you'll find Linux fanboys, Apple fanboys and surprise! Even Microsoft fanboys! But more importantly, you'll also find people impartial enough to not be fanboy to anything.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
Yes , I agree about the syntax. Instead of creating a nice consistent extension to the C language as Bjarn did with C++ (albeit with some kludges) , Obj-C really looks like someone tossed a completely different language into C because it was easier than making an effort to actually extend C nicely, and then didn't even bother to stir the resulting dogs dinner.
I laughed at this post, but then I realized you might not be trying to be funny. As a C++ programmer myself, I've never heard anyone referring to C++ in a serious way as a "nice consistent extension to the C language." C++ is an absolute monster. It's completely inconsistent in many ways and is riddled with so many "gotchas" that it takes years until you should be able to call yourself an expert. That's a long time in the context of learning a new way to describe what a computer should do.
I haven't programmed in Objective-C in years, but I do remember that it is far simpler to learn than C++. It adds comparatively little to the C language, as far as syntax goes; basically just the [] message-passing construct and the @ keywords. I think Objective-C "2.0" may have distinguished itself a little more, but I haven't looked into it.
Anyway, hopefully you're being funny. Otherwise, we have completely different opinions. Objective-C seems to have extended C in a way that is much nicer and cleaner than C++ IMO.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
There is absolutely zero technical reason for this, it's all to force developers to code to Apple's APIs.
One technical reason for this is to make sure that everybody is on the same playing field when it comes to things like architecture changes.
If you know anything about Apple history, they have been able to make successful transitions between chipsets on more than one occasion. By requiring everybody to use the same development tools, any significant architecture changes are just a recompile away in an updated Xcode.
Just one of several reasons, along with UI consistency and performance amongst others, but one of the most important.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
But that's a completely different argument, his point is that C++ extends the C syntax and rules pretty consistently, whilst Objective-C does not, it changes them.
The complexity of C++ stems not from the syntax per-se, but simply because you can do that much more with it- not only have you got namespaces for better code organisation in large projects, not only have you got tools such as operator overloading, true multiple inheritance, but you also have options such as template meta-programming.
You found C++ harder simply because it has more features, and more complex features to learn, not because of it's syntax. C++'s complexity stems purely from it's power, Objective-C's complexity stems from it's obscure syntax- the former is the price you pay for extra features, the latter is just simply inexcusable difference for the sake of difference and/or poor language design.
C++'s syntax change complexity is purely down to the amount of syntax that is required to implement such a rich set of features. If you base your argument purely on syntax without any consideration of why that additional syntax is there and without any consideration of language changes then you might as well just argue Java trumps them both because it's much closer to C syntactically than either of them, but that would be ignorant of the fact Java offers a completely different featureset again.
Perhaps the most obvious test though is this, write an application that's not overly complex and uses the base set of shared features the languages provide using their preferred syntax (rather than the fact you can just use C for either) and which then more closely represents a C program syntactically? you really can't argue it's anything other than C++, which is precisely why the jump to C++ is much more natural than to Objective-C as per the GP's argument.
Have you ever tried to actually do something with a Swiss army knife? Or any other knife with non-fixed blades? Sure, it's possible, but a bunch of special-purpose tools beat it hands-down every time. Which, I suppose, is a pretty good metaphor for C++ :).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The fact that a single, rarely-used class is somewhat slow is in no way an argument against a langauge.