Interesting piece from PC Week

[Benedikt Stefansson]

This is a bit off topic, but I thought some others might find this
interesting. There are two reasons I find this relevant. One is that I'm
at heart an Apple person and have been looking forward to the Swarm
Java-GUI and Rhapsody since both were announced. I've also become
convinced that the Swarm hive was justified in choosing Objective-C over
alternatives such as C++ for Swarm, because of the simplicty of ObjC and
the importance of late binding. So it is pretty sad to get these news
from Cupertino (from PC Week):

Objective-C jilted for Java

NeXT's avant-garde development language came ahead of its time

Ever since next Computer Inc. introduced its advanced application
development tools on the company's famous black cube, the Objective-C
language has been the star on that stage--but its days may be numbered.

In a heartbreak finish worthy of Hollywood, it looks as if Objective-C
will be
shoved aside--just as it was about to hit the big time as lead player in
Apple
Computer Inc.'s Rhapsody operating system--by newcomer Java, which puts
the same act into a more crowd-pleasing package.

Objective-C is the result of adding object facilities to C with the goal
of
making programmers more productive. The result differs greatly from C++,

which adds objects to C without making computers less efficient: quite a

different goal.

For example, Objective-C lets programmers mix and match objects of
different types that have conceptually similar behaviors. Objective-C
preserves enough information at run time to decide how behaviors should
be
invoked. This facility, called late binding, is cherished by developers
who use
other languages such as Smalltalk. C++ favors compile-time binding,
which is
more efficient but less flexible.

Ironically, some of the trade-offs that made Objective-C appear
inefficient in
centralized or locally networked computing now seem like visionary
decisions.
When an object will be loaded across a dispersed network, a program may
not
know until run time what type of object will appear. Objective-C,
Smalltalk
and other dynamic languages handle such situations with ease.

For many developers, however, the question of what tool they should use
for
network-based development has already been answered. Java (a third
object-oriented derivative of C) combines conceptual resemblance to
Smalltalk
and Objective-C with a comfortable syntactic resemblance to C++ and a
plethora of development tools and training resources. Java's platform
neutrality
is just icing on the cake.

The conceptual fit between Java and the Rhapsody environment, combined
with strong developer interest, make for a supremely well-timed
combination
as far as Rhapsody development momentum is concerned. The result is a
strategic role for the Java language, most likely overtaking the
continuing role
of Objective-C, in future work on Apple's strategic Rhapsody platform.

--
----------------
Benedikt Stefansson                 address@hidden
Department of Economics, UCLA       Fax. (310) 825-9528
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1477          Tel. (310) 825-4126



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