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Comment by elorant | Hacker News Reader

Objective-C. The syntax of this language is hideous. In most cases with languages like C#/Java/Python/Ruby etc. even if you don't know them you can understand a few things by looking at the code. Every-time I look at Objective-C code it hurts my eyes. What a convoluted piece of crap.

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I'd encourage you to play around with Obj-C a little more before writing it off. It's actually a pretty simple, compact and concise language once you dig into it. Apple's APIs, on the other hand... :facepalm:

I’d give it a try if it worked on Windows or Linux. I’m not willing to buy a Mac just to be able to study a language-I could build a Hackintosh but it’s too much trouble for what it’s worth. Most of the languages out there work on any platform. Even C# works on Unices through Mono. But for Apple’s products its always the same story, our way or the highway.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the language itself can be used on almost any platform with gcc, not just OS X.

You are correct. GNUstep would be the most well known project to make use of ObjC outside of the Apple world. Also, since it implements the OpenStep API, you could use it to get a basic feel for Mac development without jumping in to the Apple fog.

You're quite right, though of course you don't get the Cocoa libraries. GNUStep might give something of the same flavor, perhaps.

Which APIs do you dislike? I think Apple's Cocoa and Cocoa touch frameworks are some of the best. Cocoa is old and less polished, but Cocoa touch is pretty awesome.

I'd agree on Cocoa Touch, but Cocoa seems like a mess to me. I hope Apple will clean up the Cocoa API at some point in the future ...

In what way? I find AppKit to be extremely well designed. It has warts, but it's by far the best UI toolkit out there.

My only complaint would be how hacked on Core Animation is in comparison with UIKit. For example, WebView doesn't like having a layer, but this isn't mentioned anywhere in the documentation:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/...

Objective C is the 6th C-like language I've used professionally. It took a bit of getting used to, but now that I know the overall design goals, and how everything's implemented under the hood, I find it to be quite an elegant language. Properly designed APIs are a joy to use in Objective C since it's very easy to describe your intent.

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