[dagw]

Even as Python programmer I find the boast "2.6x faster than Objective-C and 8.4x faster than Python 2.7" pretty bizarre. So Objective-C is a statically typed, compiled, C superset and still only 3.5x faster than Python? That is not really something to be proud of.

[hyperpape]

Not an Objective-C programmer, but while includes static typing, it's also very dynamic. It uses a message-sending paradigm and you can construct messages at run-time from strings.

I believe Smalltalk is as about as much of an influence as C.

Lots of Objective-C programmers actively dislike Swift because it's so static.