Nine Circles of Shell

Dr. Brad Cox, Co-Creator of Objective-C, Passes

Dr. Brad J. Cox has passed away.

Sad to hear this. If you've used anything made by Apple since 2001--or anything from NeXT if you're old enough--you've ran software written in Objective-C. Even in the face of Swift's looming dominance, I have a soft spot for Objective-C, if only for the novelty of the syntax (the favicon for this site is inspired by Objective-C's messaging syntax). I understand why other languages like C++ and Java lept ahead in terms of broad adoption, but I wish it had similarly taken off despite its shortcomings. I am at least happy that Swift carries on the Objective-Cism of hilariously verbose, but surprisingly readable, argument labels in method calls.

By sheer coincidence, I was planning on dropping a guide this month written entirely in Objective-C. Keep an eye out for that.