Well, I think it could have been more cleanly designed if it was able to abandon the burden of Objective-C interoperability. (But Apple can't do this, obviously.) The standard libraries could have also been much cleaner if it didn't rely on NextStep. Also, I don't personally like the dichotomy of value types and reference types, but YMMV.
> it could have been more cleanly designed if it was able to abandon the burden of Objective-C interoperability
You mean this for the language itself and not the (standard) libraries; right?
> The standard libraries could have also been much cleaner if it didn't rely on NextStep.
I agree.
Are you talking about the weirdness where the first argument doesn't require a label? If so, that decision has been made explicit in the last few dev snapshots of 3.0. Basically, if you don't want to require a label when call a function/method then it must be made explicit.