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Comment by jsmthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Funny thing, you saying "15 minutes," since Objective-C had existed for 15 years by the first time Apple used it. Eighteen years ago.

As a multi-decade PHP developer, I would have guessed you'd be used to people deriding your language of choice and, based on that experience, developed enough common sense to not make a fool of yourself so publicly. I guess I expect too much of people.

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I don't expect much wisdom from the youngsters here.

If you were even able to read back then, nobody had heard of Objective-C until your idol Steve touched it with his golden finger. If you remember, Apple was a sad joke of a failure from the 80s till the iPod launched. And I'm sure Objective-C was really integral to the success of the Apple IIe and the iPod.

Thanks for proving my point.

Even if your assumption Objective-C was only relevant after the release of iOS was correct, then Objective-C was still relevant since 2007. That's 7 years.

Do you think I literally meant 15 minutes? 7 years is nothing.

Check this out. Objective-C wasn't even Apple's first choice.

"Apple CEO Gil Amelio started negotiations to buy Be Inc., but negotiations stalled when Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée wanted $200 million; Apple was unwilling to offer any more than $125 million. Apple's board of directors decided NeXTSTEP was a better choice and purchased NeXT in 1996 for $429 million, bringing back Apple co-founder Steve Jobs." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS

So you're all using Objective-C because Apple couldn't afford to buy the OS they wanted. Kinda sad!

NeXT was a reverse acquisition. The company known today as "Apple Inc." is essentially the result of NeXT being paid $400 million to acquire Apple.

> So you're all using Objective-C because Apple couldn't afford to buy the OS they wanted. Kinda sad!

In the early Mac OS X days, developers could choose between Objective-C and Java as the Mac OS X main language, the majority went for Objective-C and the JavaBridge was dropped.

It's a language. Get over it.

So Apple is willing to pay $125 million for Be, Gassée wants $200 million, Apple ends up buying NeXT for $429 million (at least $319 million in cash, according to the citations), and your conclusion is that Apple "couldn't afford to buy [Be]"?

You're clearly ignorant of the history, and should stop commenting on it until you actually learn some.

In particular: Objective-C was created in 1983 and its first big success was when NeXT decided to adopt it as its main language for the NeXTstep operating system in 1988. And guess who was CEO of NeXT? That's right, none other than "your idol Steve".

So unless you're saying that nobody had heard of Objective-C until 1988, which is a pretty reasonable timeframe for a language invented in 1983, you're way off base.

@mikeash I don't need the history, I lived through that era. Did you even read the whole Wikipedia entry?

"The NeXT Computer was not a great commercial success" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT_Computer

It might not have been a "commercial success", but one has to appreciate the irony of you arguing against the impact of NeXT while using a medium that was invented/first developed on this platform:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:First_Web_Server.jpg

Disclaimer: I am younger than any technology mentioned in this thread.

The way I remember it is that it was the iMac that really started the Apple turnaround, in 1998.

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