Objective C is so good that no one ever chooses to use it outside of Apple world.

That's because there isn't a vast SDK like Cocoa outside of OS X. That needs vendor support.

But that doesn't say the whole story.

Objective-C started as a small language, with a commercial compiler by Brad Cox and no backing by any major vendor. Since then it has only gone from strength to strength.

Before Apple, it was used by NeXT. The first major first-person-shooter (Doom) was done by Carmack on a NeXT in C and Objective-C. The first web broswer was written in Objective-C, by Tim Berner's Lee. Both have praised the environment and language.

Then, there was the OpenStep initiative, between NeXT and SUN, again using an Objective-C API, which, have it been seen to fruition, it would have given us a great UNIX desktop/workstation environment, like a cross between NeXT and Solaris, a decade before OS X and modern Gnome/KDE.

Then there's also the GNUStep project, a third party implementation of that OpenStep/NeXT idea, that also maintains an Objective-C compiler.

There are even ...Javascript ports of Objective-C ( http://www.cappuccino-project.org/ ).

And now of course, Objective-C is adopted by Apple after acquiring NeXT. They sure didn't feel it's a bad language and they have to move on -- instead they bet the whole company's development plans (and third party devs) on the language, and it paid off.

It's one of the most mature and development environments. And I've never seen anyone that programs in it (as opposed to "tried it for a week") badmouth it -- quite the contrary.

Right, because the popularity of a programming language is always directly correlated to the quality of its design, and because when people choose languages to build a project in they only ever take technical considerations into account.

This is the same as criticizing C# because nobody uses it outside of Microsoft world - or Java on mobile because nobody uses it outside of Android.

User installable applications for pre-smartphones were pretty much exclusively in J2ME...

err.. I think there are lot of mono software written in c# that runs on Ubuntu .. and Java not used outside of Android? ROFL

>I think there are lot of mono software written in c# that runs on Ubuntu

Not as much as you think. Mono is a niche product too.

>and Java not used outside of Android? ROFL

He said "Java on mobile". Perhaps try to understand what you read before rolling on the floor?

Java mobile (or "end user" apps in general) are Android, some crapplets, and that is mainly.

If it weren't for development tools for Java devs (Eclipse, NetBeans, etc) and some internal enterprise monstrocities people are forced to use, there wouldn't be any Java desktop adoption either.

You're really reaching if you are trying to argue that Java isn't popular.

"Apple world" is pretty big.

Quit acting like GNUStep doesn't exist.

I don't know about you, but I can't stand it it when my method calls are less wide than my screen. ObjC solves that.

I also like how there are mutually incompatible object types (the C types vs the ObjC types) that you have to MakeLongAndRidiculousCallsToConvertAcross.

Going through the basic stuff on the "learn this language" sites was painful.

ObjC is the most programmer-hostile language I've ever seen that wasn't designed with that in mind.

There is literally no reason to not allow cross-compiling. From one language into Objective-C. From one library into Cocoa. The ONLY reason to prohibit that, is to try to force people to stay inside your walled garden, with no way to climb out, allowing you to simultaneously develop apps for multiple (non-iOS) devices.

It was a dick move, and thank goodness they got called out for it.

And yes, it was to try to enforce a monopoly.