

Ask HN: Is Objective-C Now Dead? - tronium

With the advent of Swift, will Apple quit developing Objective-C and faze it out all together over the next few years? Or will it be split off somehow and given further development?
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omarforgotpwd
The runtime is the the same, so there is no immediate need for it to die, but
it will die slowly.

Kids may not remember this but you used to be able to access the Cocoa
frameworks with Java...

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chrisBob
I think it will take a while. Right now I can StackOverflow my entire project,
and it will be a little while before I can do that with Swift.

Seriously though, a lot of developers will try and keep it around as long as
possible because of existing codebases. I bet that even includes developers at
Apple.

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xauronx
As an iOS developer with several apps in the store and maintaining an
enterprise app, I have no interest in Swift. The syntax seems like a step
backwards; people complain about javascript constantly, and yet this is like a
javascript mask on top of objective-c. Perhaps when it gains some popularity
and people figure out what it's good for, and if it's sticking around, I'll
learn it. For now I'll stick with objective-c, especially since it took like 3
years to become proficient with it.

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eyuelt
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know many people that complain about the
syntax of JS. Usually the complaints are about the many poor design decisions
(due, no doubt, to the fact that the language was designed in only 10 days).
So I don't think there's anything wrong having a syntax that looks similar to
JS.

Also, though I haven't actually looked very much into Swift yet, from what
I've seen, I disagree that Swift is just a syntactical mask on top of Obj-C.
It looks to me to be following a similar approach to Rust and Go, in that it
combines features of many different languages, object oriented and functional
alike.

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joshdance
No. Languages take a while to die. C is still around. There are millions of
apps written in Obj-C. It will take a while for Swift to get to that level of
popularity.

~~~
professorTuring

      "No. Languages take a while to die. C is still around."
    

That is unfortunate. You can't compare a language supported by mostly one
company as Objective-C against one of the most important languages around.

C is widely used and a not dead, not even wounded language. Thousand of
companies use it every day in core systems, embedded systems...

I am really wondering why you have suggested C being dead or on his way to
die...

