On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J

Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by shaunxcode on Monday December 08, 2008 @04:43PM (#390426)

Why would you NOT want to redefine syntax if that new definition could make you dramatically more productive and or your code more readable? Sure if you are working on a large project for a large company (or even a large open source project) of course you want to make sure your code can be understood/maintained by johnny random but when you are talking about your journeyman type project - why would you compromise - and better yet why is it you aren't tackling problems which make you "up your game" in terms of abstractions and tools available to you?

Mechanics have wrenches with the edges ground off or thinned down, even heated and bent to fit special applications. So why shouldn't I have my own syntax which sits on top of a readily available platform?

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Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by Tichy on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @07:21AM (#391220)

Not against changing syntax in general, but in the case of LISP, it seems hard to change it without messing it up.

I guess I don't like more and more "special signs" (like @, [], <>, #) invading the code.

I've witnessed it with Java where a lot of new syntax was introduced. The thing is, these are all new concepts adding to the complexity of the language (annotations, generics,...). I prefer to keep things simple.

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Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by shaunxcode on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @12:59PM (#393211)

Good point - there is definitely fundamentally beautiful and intrinsic about the balance and simplicity of lisp. Personally I find removing syntax (another way of changing it) to be an empowering project. My current project is to introduce a syntax for php which is something more along the lines of smalltalk meets lisp - the real trick here was removing syntax and making it more gramatically relevant if used at all.

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Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by volida on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @05:24AM (#391166)

Well as the article pointed out Objective-C is supposed to be a better C. Do you see anyone who knows C care about this Objective-C? Obviously the original is around now for almost 40 years.

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Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by tlrobinson on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @07:36AM (#391231)

I wouldn't say Objective-C is supposed to be "a better C", just different, and better. They're quite different (besides the obvious fact that Objective-C is indeed a superset of C). C is a statically typed procedural language while Objective-C is a very dynamic object oriented language with optional static typing.

It's really quite elegant if you think about it. It's a highly dynamic language that was designed more than 20 years ago and is still very relevant today as the platform of choice for developing nearly all Mac OS X and iPhone apps. As far as dynamic languages go it's very fast since it's compiled. It integrates seamlessly with C (and even C++).

Just because you don't know or care about Objective-C doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people who do. I regularly see articles about Objective-C on the front page of Hacker News, Reddit, etc.

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Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by volida on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @10:23AM (#391342)

I didn't dispute the potential of Objective-C being better and more useful. What I said, is that although Objective-C may be better it never got more popular than the original.

Therefore although their effort with what they call Objective-J may be worthwhile, it's certain it will never go mainstream.

One significant reason? It runs toooo slow on IE. IF it ever gets fast, maybe more people will give it a shot.

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Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by Tichy on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @05:20PM (#391902)

Hm, isn't it only relevant because Apple forces people to use it? If there was a public vote for the programming language for the iPhone, would people really vote for Objective-C?

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Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by tlrobinson on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @08:04PM (#392163)

Perhaps, but if it were really that undesirable of a language would Apple have chosen it as their platform of choice?

And it's certainly not stopping people from writing apps. There's now more than 10,000 apps on the iPhone App Store alone.

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