The Beauty of Objective-C?

[multiplexer]

This is a tech blurble.  If you’re not interested in tech blurbles, you can skip this one.  Sometimes it reaches peak blurble and it flows out over my blog and then the tide recedes for a while.

I really love Ruby.  Something about Ruby does it for me. I’m not clear what it is - the readability, the list comprehensions and lamda functions, the

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Objective C

[fdmts]

So, I attended a weeklong immersion / kool-aid session at the Big Nerd Ranch a few years back, and I learned how to think Objective C thoughts.

You're right. It's clunky, it's contrived, it's slow at heart.

However, it has the best goddamn set of libraries I've ever even imagined.

The key with Objective C is to imagine a world where your job is to be creative - and to let someone else be smart behind the scenes. Me? I can't do it. I keep moving crap and lifting the carpet and finding ways to make the magical time machine fall over.

However, I saw people in class just giving in and having magical time machine adventures. It looked like they were having fun.

Re: Objective C

[multiplexer]

I have discovered the libraries. OMG the libraries. Want to read a web service? Show a movie? Store data? Draw a splash screen? There's a completely finished library call for that. I am rapidly discovering that I am learning the guts of a language used to lash together giant LEGO sets.

I'm like you -- I need to know who the man behind the curtain is. I need to rip apart all the guts to understand what is going on on some quantum level.

[nicegeek]

I get brain-conflict from Objective-C, probably because I've done so much C++. Since Objective-C split from C before C++ came about, but introduced many of the same features, they've got different syntax to do similar things. I keep thinking how much simpler O-C would be if it were implemented as a dynamic class extension to C++; you could probably do with just a couple of extra keywords to denote where something is dynamic-bound. Objective-C++ doesn't qualify; it just lets you use both C++ and O-C constructs in the same program, but their syntax is still radically different.

[multiplexer]

I got to Objective-C's version of reflection last night. Now, I'm used to Ruby's version of reflection which is pretty wacky but can be used for good as well as evil.

Objective-C's version of reflection is the strata that makes the iPhone and iPad work. All the sudden /everything/ becomes data driven. The entire interface becomes a combination of drawing kit (events) and data driven responses. And it makes sense why to use something as utterly bizarre and non-intuitive as Objc-C in mobile. (Not so much on the desktop.) Put in the HUGE OMG LIST of libraries and... it's easy to generate small, focused apps.

But it's still wacky. I think I like it better than Java but, then again, I like sticks covered in ebola shoved in my eyesocket better than Java.