noren@dinl.uucp (Charles Noren) (02/22/90)
I knows this must fall under frequently asked questions and probably
should be posted under comp.lang.religion..., but
We are about to move from the standard C compiler on a Sun 3 to
either C++ or Objective C. I would like some recommendations
on which language to use. I know C++ is much more popular than
Objective C, but I would like some insights into the differences
of the languages and their impact on software development.
Thanks in advance.
--
Chuck Noren
NET: ncar!dinl!noren
US-MAIL: Martin Marietta I&CS, MS XL8058, P.O. Box 1260,
Denver, CO 80201-1260
Phone: (303) 971-7930jsweet@slsaux.arc.nasa.gov (John Sweet) (03/02/90)
Though I walk in the Valley of Early-Binding
and "Real-time" systems, the Lord is at my side.
I shall lay down my debugger, and walk the
paths of righeousness.
Objective-C is my sheppard, and I do not want.
Balenced Credentials:
Six-years C, C++, Objective-C programming on
Vax, Sun, Mac, DOS, Real-time boards.
Written several compilers, "C" language
extensions, yacc/lex type stuff.
Two-years of 80-hour/week experience for a small
"start-up" developing a 'real-world' commercial
product in Objective-C (w/database&windows).
Two-months of 80-hour/week work to create
my own personal, C++ compiler. (At the time
I wanted to really know C++, and I didn't know
about GNU).
Obviously, the deciding factor in you're
decision should be your "application". This
sounds terribly wishy-washy, but you will chose
in your context for your context. Since there
are infinite application contexts, we must find
an abstraction for our basis of generalization.
I propose we use "boundedness".
If your application is "user-bounded", as
opposed to interrupt-latency-bounded, then
the time it takes for the user to move the
mouse is very large relative to the time
it takes for Objective-C to dispatch a message.
This means that the time/keystrokes/clicking
it takes for the user to complete a task,
dominates the equation:
Task Time = UserTime + ComputeTime + I/O_Time
The last time I was a USER, the quantity on
the left hand side of this equation was very
important to me.
Why choose Objective-C?
- StepStone is an excellent company.
- Next has chosen Objective-C.
- IBM (I believe) has just announced a
new Unix platform which comes standard
with Objective-C.
These reasons are political, and, in my
opinion, balance the explicit (or implicit)
endorsements by AT&T, Apple, and GNU.
- Objective-C is an abstract superset of
C++, (By this I mean that everything you can
do in C++, i.e. static binding without the
message dispatcher, except for inline functions
- which is not really an abstraction - you can
do in Objc, but they are not gramatically supersets).
- Self-referential applications are more
powererful. (Don't throw away your symbol
table at compile-time in the name of efficiency
and then torture yourself writing lines of code
to regenerated it).
- Professionally maintained, supported,
and documented Class library. (Like Smalltalk
the best OOPL's come complete with libraries
of Inheritable Objects created by wise parental
units).
- Stepstone has ported its Class libraries
to a large number of platforms, and assists
companies in porting to new platforms. (This
includes a cut of any royalties on the new machine).
- You can buy and use off the shelf C-libraries
from Doctor Dobbs, et al, just like C and C++.
- The mesage dispatcher frees you from
compile-time circular references and those
really nasty C++ makefiles with all their
dependencies to ensure that their compiler's
contextually bloated symbol table is loaded
with all those constants.
- This make OOPs very difficult:
#define OffsetOfFooMethod 16
(*(myPseudoObject->vfunc_table[OffsetOfFooMethod]))( arg0, arg1 );
/* I left out the casts and time-hashed function names */
(NOTE: if you looked up the offset of the foo method
at run-time, and allowed different classes to (without
expanding the consumer's context) implement foo at
different offsets in their virtual function table
(i.e. their virtual interface), then you would be
going down the OOP road and feeling glad, glad, glad..)
- This makes OOPs much easier:
if ( [anyInstance respondsTo:"foo"] == YES )
[ anyInstance foo ];
It's kindof like when you're looking at that
loop wondering why, no matter how you program
it, one boundary condition or the other messes you
up...
And then you realize that, if you declare another
variable and keep arround that essentail piece of
information that, by throwing it away, was making
your life so difficult...
Sometimes that essential piece of information
has a larger context than a for loop...
C++ programmers wake up!!!
By throwing away you symbol table at compile time
you are making your life more difficult than it
need be.
Try Objective-C.
Good luck,
j.s.s.
At times it is difficult to tell the saved from
the damned when they are all talking in tongues.bader+@andrew.cmu.edu (Miles Bader) (03/03/90)
Just for fun, here are my six favorite icky bits in Objective-C 4.0 on the
next machine, circa January 1989:
1) It currently uses a single namespace for method templates, regardless of
the type of the receiver. This results in warnings when two (totally
independent) classes use the same method name but with different argument
or return types. It *should* warn only if the type of the receiver is a
superclass of the two classes with conflicting methods (such as when it's
an id). This is VERY IRRITATING, as extremely common cases result in
this (e.g. [Float create:1.0] & [Int create:1]).
2) It currently uses a single namespace for the instance variables of an
object of a given type AND all its superclasses' instance variables.
Instance variables should be known only to the implementation of a class;
its subclasses shouldn't have to worry about name-clashes with their own
instance variables (and conversely, shouldn't have such easy access to
their superclasses instance variables).
3) It should not warn about implicit casts from a type to one of that type's
superclasses. (e.g. Object *foo=[SubTypeOfObject new]; should elicit no
warnings). The c-compiler seems to be doing the complaining, so
objective-c should put real casts into the c-code it outputs.
4) There should be a pseudo-type that is always the same as the type of the
receiver at compile time, so that methods inherited by a subclass that
return (or have an argument of) that type don't have to be unnecessarily
casted, in cases where it doesn't make sense to do so. Example:
@interface A {}
-(ReceiverType *)self; // stupid method just returns self
@end
@interface B : A {}
// inherits the self method from A
@end
One can then do:
{B *var1=[B new], *var2=[B self];}
without warning messages. One can acheive this by using the (id) type,
but at the expense of compile-time type-checking in these cases. Indeed,
the +new class method in Object should probably return (ReceiverType *).
5) Apparently, a unique, global symbol is declared by the objc
pre-processor in each file, with a name constructed from the
filename. This prevents users from using filenames that are the
same as any filename used in the objc library that ends up being
linked! It doesn't actually give an error to this effect, you
just get a multiply defined symbol error from the linker. Users
definitely shouldn't have to worry about name-clashes with the
filenames used in the objc library!
6) If you reference a class by using it as a type in it's own include
file, objective-c uses the contents of the instance variable
declaration block as the contents of TWO structures in the
resulting include file. This breaks if any of the instance
variables are non-anonymous structures (as it results in declaring
those structures twice). As NeXT include files often contain such
non-anonymous structures in their instance variables, this shows
up frequently for me.
wdr@wang.com (William Ricker) (03/06/90)
jsweet@slsaux.arc.nasa.gov (John Sweet) writes: [technical reasons omitted] >Why choose Objective-C? > - StepStone is an excellent company. > - Next has chosen Objective-C. > - IBM (I believe) has just announced a > new Unix platform which comes standard > with Objective-C. called RSX-6000, a RISC platform, with amazing claimed MIPS. Supposedly bought the NextStep package of Objective-C and NeXT's windowing system, a nice combination. Do see the interface-builder demo on NextStep. Draw your windows & menus & boxes, connect them to (new) object-classes, and fill-in bodies for (automagically created) methods matching the menu & window ops. Add: - Oracle said in their presentation at CASE: The Next Generation (a commercial "symposium") that their CASE*<mumble> offereings are implemented in "C and Objective-C". > These reasons are political, and, in my opinion, >balance the explicit (or implicit) >endorsements by AT&T, Apple, and GNU. This list may be getting to critical mass, where companies may now consider Objective-C a politically (=business decision) safe alternative. > - Objective-C is an abstract superset of >C++, (By this I mean that everything you can >do in C++, i.e. static binding without the >message dispatcher, except for inline functions Comment: Do not judge Objective-C by only Cox's book; the book documents the pre-NeXT version of the language. Not only does Objective-C 4.0 have the static-binding option mentioned above, but it also fixes the name-space problem which is obvious to casual readers of the Cox book who consider building large systems. > - Self-referential applications are more > powererful. As are languages with some support for persistent objects, which Objective-C does have, in part because it doesn't throw-away its symbol table. > - Professionally maintained, supported, >and documented Class library. Hear, hear! Between Stepstone's Software-ICs and the NextStep interface builder and display-postscript interface, you get a wonderful package. > C++ programmers wake up!!! > By throwing away you symbol table at compile time >you are making your life more difficult than it >need be. > Try Objective-C. Amen. My biases: I was very happy as an Objective-C 4.0 Beta site, and wish I had a development plan to use it for. (I don't recommend using Beta anything, but I recommend Objective-C 4.0.) Unfortunately for me, the RSX-6000 and NeXT aren't immediately seen as strategic platforms for our software, so I've only gotten demos of NextStep/InterfaceBuildinger or whatever they call it. But I know enough PostScript & ObjectiveC to know the demo I saw wasn't smoke and mirrors but a real program. Bill Ricker wdr @ wang.com