On May 20, 2008, at 9:52 PM, Peter Duniho wrote:
Each language varies a bit, of course. But in the other popular
languages that I know reasonably well -- C++, C#, Java -- a subclass
does not have the ability to touch any part of the base
implementation that is not specifically exposed by that
implementation. Private members are invisible, and other members
are only overridable when the base class allows it by making them
virtual.
<snip>
Cocoa restrains class extension _much_ less than any of these other
languages, and in turn has a _much_ higher degree of hazard.
The goal is not for every language to mimic C++/C#/Java. Different
languages serves different purposes and there is no single best
language. Take Adobe Lightroom as an example, almost half of the code
(by line count) is written in Lua:
<http://www.lua.org/wshop05/Hamburg.pdf>
Is this because they don't know how great a static, restrictive, safe,
and secure language is? No, it's because they thought that some other
language quality was more important.
I think that Objective C finds a pragmatic sweet spot between the
performance and interoperability of C, and the dynamism and rapid
development qualities of scripting languages. It is small and easy to
learn, easy to read and write, and since you rarely have to deal with
raw pointers, it also provides many of the benefits of a more pure
object environment like Smalltalk/Java/C#.
Most developers that I know of feel more productive in Objective C
than using more restrictive languages like C++/C#/Java. You might
expect that the same qualities that makes a language good for rapid
development also would brings some drawbacks, for example making the
code more difficult to read and maintain. However, this is not a
problem typically associated with Objective-C.
Finally, also note that the compiler isn't the only, or perhaps even
the best, way to achieve productivity and quality - See the
discussions on "Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing":
<http://mindview.net/WebLog/log-0025>
It's certainly a continuum. I agree we're not talking either/or,
black/white, etc. here. Other languages aren't without their danger
zones either. It just seems to me that Cocoa goes overboard, for
relatively little payoff.
Let's agree to re-visit this discussion one to two years from now. I
don't think that it's fair of us to expect you to provide an informed
comparison before you have more experiences with both environments.
Regards,
j o a r
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