[msbarnett]

Eh, a lot of the complaints just strike me as not understanding a tool in terms of its context; Objective-C is, intentionally, a strict superset of C, so it carries a lot of baggage in order to not break C code. It predates most of what we now think of as C++. It managed to bring Smalltalk-style dynamic messaging to C in a manner that wasn't insanely slow and didn't depend on heavy-weight virtual machines.

Are Python's dictionaries syntactically a bit cleaner? Sure. But Python is much newer and had the advantage of not having to maintain compatibility with a vast corpus of C code, and not having to care about achieving very very very good native code run-time performance on very resource limited machines.

It's just a tool. One that makes a completely different set of tradeoffs than, say, Python (Python might win in terms of cleanliness of dictionary syntax, but it's orders of magnitude less suitable for bringing high-level, dynamic OO to low-resource programming). The people who whine that these Apples aren't Oranges and that they refuse to do work in anything that isn't citrus-flavoured strike me as having come to rely too heavily on familiar crutches to truly learn to appreciate the other advantages that can be found in tools that make different trade-offs.

[mkramlich]

I understand and agree with much of what you say. However I am -- increasingly as I get older -- a fan of Getting Things Done, so I prefer tools that let me do that better. This is the role where ObjC is inferior to alternatives like Python, among others.

I was doing assembly programming in the mid/late 80's, then was a C programmer for about 5 years, then C++ for about 2, then Java for many years after that before switching to Python as my default goto language. Leaving out experience with several other languages. I am a language geek, not super hardcore as some, but far above average. So I'm quite confident in saying ObjC is a needlessly archaic, verbose and complex language compared to alternatives. Is it totally without merits? Of course not. Was it designed to fit a niche and context? Yes, and perhaps it achieved those goals well, and some would argue better than C++. But all of this is irrelevant when it exists as part of a larger set of choices available to a modern programmer who wants to Get Something Done and has sufficient freedom to choose his tech mix. Given the right permutation of constraints any tech can become the Perfect Choice for those constraints, so saying that alone about ObjC is not a compliment.