"I don't like that there is no garbage collection on the iPhone, and that I have to write header files. The pointer stuff looks suspicious, too, but I have not read far enough to know how awful it will be."
If those are your only complaints, may I suggest Objective-J and Cappuccino... http://cappuccino.org ;)
We have garbage collection (it's just JavaScript underneath), no header files, and no raw pointers (again, just JavaScript objects).
But pointers in Objective-C aren't really a big deal, you just have to be sure to declare your variables with the "*". After that they're just like objects in any other dynamic language.
As far as the "pseudo-dynamic" claim goes, it is indeed an interesting mix of dynamic and static. You can add new methods (in "categories"), introspect objects for their methods, etc. If you don't want static typing just declare all your variables as "id".
The more I learn about Objective-C the more I find it to be a very elegant language. It's pretty amazing how 20 years ago they were able to take a very rigid non-dynamic language, C, and turn it into something so dynamic. Even 20 years later Objective-C and Cocoa are still very modern language/framework combo (granted it has been updated by Apple over the years).
If those are your only complaints, may I suggest Objective-J and Cappuccino... http://cappuccino.org ;)
We have garbage collection (it's just JavaScript underneath), no header files, and no raw pointers (again, just JavaScript objects).
But pointers in Objective-C aren't really a big deal, you just have to be sure to declare your variables with the "*". After that they're just like objects in any other dynamic language.
As far as the "pseudo-dynamic" claim goes, it is indeed an interesting mix of dynamic and static. You can add new methods (in "categories"), introspect objects for their methods, etc. If you don't want static typing just declare all your variables as "id".
The more I learn about Objective-C the more I find it to be a very elegant language. It's pretty amazing how 20 years ago they were able to take a very rigid non-dynamic language, C, and turn it into something so dynamic. Even 20 years later Objective-C and Cocoa are still very modern language/framework combo (granted it has been updated by Apple over the years).