In my experience, the problem with scenarios like fight the ObjC folks in the story is that the "curmudgeons" don't see the need for anything to change. Their arguments are not "We should use ObjC and do X, Y, and Z to make sure the problems are fixed," but rather usually turn out to be something like "We should use ObjC (and throw out the rewrite entirely; everything was fine before)." Which at best only results in kicking the problem down the street a ways and at worst is not possible.