Comment by lurch_mojoff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lurch_mojoff | Hacker News Reader

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Well, it looked plenty for very small values of plenty, from where I stand. There were some very well reasoned arguments against the restriction - arguments like the fact that many libraries and game engines require the flexibility that scripting allows; or like the fact that there are languages and environments that are more conducive of tackling certain types of problems. Those, however were drowned in a sea of petty complaints like "I know language XYZ and now Apple are making me learn their sucky ObjC" or "Apple just want to prevent you from porting your app to a competing platform, them Nazis", or dramatic pronouncements that Apple have turned their back on the hacker crowd and thus are stifling innovation.

And I'm not saying we shouldn't believe Apple when they say they've listened to the developer community. I am saying that such decisions usually factor in a broader spectrum of reasons. At the very least, there are may examples of Apple not budging on issues, regardless of the huge ruckus.

I'm also not saying we shouldn't complain. I am saying we should cut on the drama, try to understand Apple's rationale for their decisions, and figure out a way to meet them midway. Or as Apple say in the intro to the App Store Review Guidelines - "If it sounds like we're control freaks, well, maybe it's because we're so committed to our users and making sure they have a quality experience with our products. Just like almost all of you are too."

> "I know language XYZ and now Apple are making me learn their sucky ObjC"

That's a very valid complaint imo, except for the 'sucky', was that present in the original?

> "Apple just want to prevent you from porting your app to a competing platform, them Nazis"

Are you sure about the 'them Nazis' bit in this one ? Otherwise, again, that's a valid complaint.

> I'm also not saying we shouldn't complain. I am saying we should cut on the drama,

Indeed.

>That's a very valid complaint imo, except for the 'sucky', was that present in the original?

While 'sucky' isn't up to HN's style standards, and a more reasoned response is always preferable, I personally don't think the prohibition Apple put in place was sufficiently reasonable to merit a reasonable response.

"Sucky" isn't very descriptive, but I wouldn't blame somebody used to a more advanced or coherent language for feeling frustrated with Objective-C. It is a backwards language in many ways, and I say that as somebody who's been writing it for the better part of a decade.

It doesn't even have namespaces — something that has been standard in every language since the '90s. Instead, you must stick a two- or three-character prefix on all your class and function names (some people even recommend prefixing method names) and hope that nobody else happened to pick the same two or three characters for theirs.

For another example, it has a strongly dynamic OO model, but a singularly unhelpful static type system that is shackled with C compatibility, leaving the language in this awkward limbo between static and dynamic, where you're offered all these tantalizing paths that turn out to be blocked by walls.

Yet another: It has monkey-patching like Ruby, but it lacks the language or library support to do it anywhere near as cleanly (which is saying something if you know how messy Ruby monkey patches can be), to the point where some parts are almost necessary and others are almost unusable and it's not obvious at first where the pitfalls lie.

(On the other hand, a lot of people hate Objective-C for pretty bad reasons too. There seems to be a legion of PHP converts who really want to write PHP in Objective-C.)

I've been doing a lot of Objective-C coding the past few months, and have found it surprisingly pleasant, once I got used to the syntax. Maybe I had low usability expectations for a language based on C. :-)

It's not unusable, and overall I actually prefer it to, say, C or Java. But compared to modern languages it has some glaring weaknesses.

Also, you have to be careful to distinguish between the framework and the language. Cocoa is an excellent framework that does a great job playing to Objective-C's strengths. It's the language that I'm criticizing here.

Those, however were drowned in a sea of petty complaints like "I know language XYZ and now Apple are making me learn their sucky ObjC" or "Apple just want to prevent you from porting your app to a competing platform, them Nazis"

Uh, what? These seem like perfectly legitimate complaints to me. Why shouldn't you be allowed to use the tools you already know how to use? Why shouldn't you be allowed to write once and run anywhere?

I've got nothing against your point on using the tools you know, but I can at least see where Apple is coming from with disallowing write once, run everywhere, especially regarding UI (think Java apps on OS X).

But doesn't Apple already have user interface guidelines to let them reject apps that (inappropriately) behave the same way on different platforms?

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