Why Objective‑C Isn’t Dead: A Historical Journey and Its Modern Relevance

Review of Objective‑C’s Development History

To trace Objective‑C’s true origins, we must go back to 1962. In an era before the Internet, two engineers at the NR Computing Center created Simula to improve ALGOL and released Simula‑67 in 1967, introducing dot‑style syntax for method calls.

Later, the Smalltalk team developed another object‑oriented language, releasing Smalltalk in 1980 with a “label:variable” syntax and a complete operating system. Smalltalk introduced brackets for variable handling, which Objective‑C later adopted for message passing.

Many of the Smalltalk developers moved to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, continuing their innovative work. Although Smalltalk was ahead of its time, it required abandoning existing tools and fully adopting its ecosystem, which proved unfriendly for developers and users.

Brad Cox then arrived with a different philosophy: instead of a revolutionary language, he pursued incremental innovation. He added Smalltalk‑style message passing to the familiar C language, creating Objective‑C, as explained in his book Object‑Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach .

Cox and co‑founder Tom Love formed Stepstone to support the language. Stepstone’s version was essentially a C pre‑processor that translated messages into C functions, lacking reference counting and other features; its standard library was ICpak 210.

The language was later renamed “Objective‑C” after NeXT acquired the trademark and added dot syntax.

NeXT used Objective‑C to build its GUI tools, a natural fit because graphical interfaces consist of objects. NeXT’s GUI system included a PostScript server written in Objective‑C, though the system was still rough and grew problematic as projects scaled.

Developers such as Scott Ritchie, Steve Naroff, and Blaine Garst enhanced Objective‑C with features like blocks, dynamic mechanisms, and caching, improving performance and capabilities.

Objective‑C’s Advanced Features

By incorporating many Smalltalk concepts, Objective‑C was advanced for its era. Its dynamic nature offered early introspection, weak typing (initially all variables were of type id, later expressed as NSArray*), isa‑swizzling, faulting mechanisms, and runtime class creation, which underpins features like KVO.

The language also introduced categories, a powerful but controversial feature that changed how developers extended frameworks, despite opposition from Java‑centric programmers.

Improvements to Objective‑C

After NeXT’s acquisition, several books appeared, including Objective‑C: Object‑Oriented Programming Techniques and the NeXT‑published Object‑Oriented Programming and the Objective‑C Language , the latter being the definitive guide at the time.

NeXT recognized language shortcomings and rewrote the OpenStep operating system, adding reference counting, prefixes, and more types to Objective‑C. OpenStep was licensed to Sun, which open‑sourced an implementation called GNUstep, preserving most of OpenStep’s API.

Nevertheless, the original Objective‑C’s root class was fragile, containing many instance variables, making later subclassing difficult. Objective‑C 2.0 addressed this with fast enumeration, garbage collection, and later ARC, though some legacy issues persisted.

The Arrival of Swift

Despite continuous improvements, Objective‑C’s decades‑old design left unresolved legacy problems and outdated features. Apple needed a fresh language, leading to Swift, which offers a more modern, less C‑centric syntax and tools like Playgrounds, albeit with some compromises for Objective‑C interoperability.

Objective‑C Is Not Dead

Apple continues to invest heavily in Objective‑C libraries such as UIKit, AppKit, and Foundation. All Apple software is still built on Objective‑C, and the language receives ongoing enhancements like templates and non‑nil types, ensuring its long‑term presence in the Apple ecosystem.

Aaron Hillegass argues that Objective‑C remains the best choice for interfacing with C/C++ code, while Swift is better suited for higher‑level tasks. Even Hillegass himself has shifted to advocating Swift, highlighting Swift’s importance for current learning and research.

Since its inception in the NeXT era, Objective‑C has become inseparable from Apple’s identity; its future depends on Apple’s continued support, but for now the language remains very much alive.