[mpweiher]

> you get direct access to all these rock-solid libraries

> in C that everything is built on -- zlib, libcurl, etc.

> So instead of dealing with a tower of wrappers in a

> high-level language

That's what I love about Objective-C: you get that, the direct access, and at the same time transparent, non-wrappered access to a high-level, dynamic object-oriented language.

[autoreleasepool]

Don't forget about Objective-C++! That's where the true powers of the dark side are.

Side Note: Objective-C is such a criminally underrated language. I often see people complaining about the syntax, but it's just syntax. Once you get over it, I find that the language makes the OOP paradigm a joy to work with.

[xaa]

Honestly, I never seriously considered it. I thought it was more-or-less an "Apple thing". OFC it is supported on other platforms, but seemingly not widely used (I write scientific code that really only has to work on Linux).

But after looking at its feature set, I wonder how easy it is to get by without templates? It seemingly uses weak typing instead like Go for scenarios that would normally require generics/templates. My attitude towards templates/generics is that they are absolutely necessary for a good standard library and core containers, but implementation of new templates in your own code should be rare.

Also, I do like namespaces in general, although not necessarily C++'s implementation of them.

[a13xb]

I'll be a contrarian here and say that Objective-C is an ugly mess, and not even "because brackets". It's the language full of terrible hacks, historic baggage, and bolted-on features. Objective-C++ is basically the worst of both worlds. :)

Programming languages have advanced a fair bit since the 80s, it's time for Objective-C to die peacefully.