“Metaprogramming” isn’t a scary word (not even in Objective-C)

While I like Swift (from what I've played with it, around SourceKitService crashing every two seconds), it doesn't provide you with the "just enough rope" that Objective-C does. Many of Objective-C's best capabilities lie in its ability to do some crazy things with metaprogramming (much like Ruby). This is a terrific introduction to that. I'd love to see a full-on book dedicated to the subject, TBH.

As an aside, I can't say I've ever seen these Genius annotations in a blog post before, but the way they're used here make this read like a chapter from a textbook with really useful sidebars. I hope this sort of thing catches on with other development blogs.

The one thing I wish Objective C (or other languages, too, unless I’m missing some [totally possible]) is that the abstractions of metaprogramming are often hard to follow. You get to a point where you’re working entirely with abstract symbols (method or class names, for example), and it becomes difficult to track down problems.

I’d love to figure out a nicer way to deal with this.