On May 19, 2008, at 4:36 PM, Peter Duniho wrote:
But not the sort of compelling "we really need the language to be this way otherwise it just doesn't work" example I was hoping for.
I wonder -- just thinking out loud now -- if this standard is too high for Objective-C to meet. I also wonder if the question couldn't be turned around.
Objective-C is a combination of C and Smalltalk -- two very permissive languages with particular philosophies, both successful in their own ways. It would have required a conscious design decision to add stricter compile-time checking. I would ask whether that extra strictness is so compelling that "otherwise it just [wouldn't] work" -- basically a variation of this question:
<http://www.mindview.net/WebLog/log-0025>
This became a puzzle to me: if strong static type checking is so important, why are people able to build big, complex Python programs (with much shorter time and effort than the strong static counterparts) without the disaster that I was so sure would ensue?
A *lot* of robust and successful software, commercial and otherwise, has been written and lovingly maintained in Objective-C, so clearly at some level it does work. Could the same have happened if NeXT had never existed and Apple had bought the C++-based Be instead? Maybe, which is why I hesitate to argue that the Objective-C way is "better."
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