Re: Objective-C and it's future

FROM : Robert Walker
DATE : Sat Jul 08 02:12:49 2006

Very well put Charlton.  I completely agree.  The "id" type 
declaration is one of the most brilliant, powerful, and flexible 
design solutions I've seen in any language.  I don't think of Obj-C 
as being "weakly-typed," it's actually "dynamically-typed."  There is 
a big difference between those two concepts.

To me it's just another trade-off that influences the design of the 
language.  The more statically typed a language becomes, the more 
flexibility that the developer loses.  It's my opinion that Obj-C has 
the best balance of any language that I've had the pleasure of 
using.  Oh and by the way my primary programming language is Java. 
But the more Obj-C I learn, the more I understand the power of Obj-
C's dynamism.

On Jul 7, 2006, at 7:55 PM, Charlton Wilbur wrote:

>
> On Jul 7, 2006, at 7:33 PM, Thomas Davie wrote:
>

>> The most basic extension of the type system I can think of is to 
>> allow something akin to generics, or ADTs to allow us to specify 
>> such things as what type of object an array contains.

>
> Dynamic typing means you don't *need* Java-style generics or C++-
> style templates -- they are, after all, an attempt to give static 
> typing the flexibility of dynamic typing.  Java needs generics so 
> that the compiler can determine what type an object is; Objective-C 
> punts the decision to runtime.  This is not a mistake, but an 
> intentional design decision; the things that prevent you from doing 
> stupid things often also prevent you from doing brilliant things.
>
> (Some might say -- and I am among them -- that C++'s inisistence on 
> static typing, and on all type decisions being made at compile-
> time, is its single greatest design flaw.  And Java, which could 
> have followed Objective-C's lead, followed in C++'s footsteps 
> instead.)
>
> To paraphrase a very wise man, if you want C++ (or Java), you know 
> where to find it.
>
> On the other hand, I wouldn't mind explicit support in the language 
> for pre- and post-conditions, invariants, and other constraints, so 
> that the compiler and runtime could correctly infer that a type 
> mismatch had occurred.
>

>> So questions here really are (a) is there a more appropriate place 
>> to post this, (b) opinions on Objective-C's type system.

>
> (a) Probably.  I'd recommend comp.lang.objective-c, if you can 
> manage to ignore a particularly egregious troll.
>
> (b) Dynamic typing works well for this particular problem domain. 
> I don't see any real advantage to making the typing static except 
> reassuring people who aren't familiar with the Objective-C mindset, 
> and compromising one of Objective-C's strengths in order to do so.
>
> Charlton
>
>
> --
> Charlton Wilbur
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--
Robert Walker
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There are 10 types of people in the world, those who count in binary, 
and those who don't.