I cannot swallow Objective-c syntax, any advice?

Question

Hi folks,

I know this is a mater of taste, but actually I cannot accept the Objective-c syntax.

Any advices so that I can go ahead and learn this language with this freak syntax?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Just go ahead, sooner or later you'll like it. I had the same opinion when i started!

Answer 2

Start with smaller projects and work your way up. If you're trying to do complex things out of the gate, it sounds like that's not going to work well in this case.

Answer 3

Learn to swallow what you find distasteful.

OR

Don't be so fussy, it's only a language syntax.

Answer 4

You have three choices basically:

• Suck it up and deal with the abomination that is Objective-C.
• Use a front end to Objective C. (note those are 3 separate links)
• Abandon all hopes of Cocoa, iPod, iPhone, iPad development and move to Android.

Answer 5

I never really grew to like it, but I started to be able to parse it more easily when I accepted how functions are called. Coming from other languages, that was my biggest hang-up.

Take this example: [[instanceVariable method1] method2]

When you realize that you're looking at the equivalent of instanceVariable.method1().method2(), things make more sense.

Beyond that, ignore the 'NS' at the beginning of all the standard objects. It's irrelevant to the functionality of the object.

Answer 6

Someday, somehow, someone will write something that replaces C, C++, Objective C and all its ugly variants and descendants such as Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP forever with a new way of programming using a reasonable syntax while still running very fast yet being more flexible.

Perhaps that could be you :) It usually starts by someone just no longer being able to tolerate the current state of things - or someone who's not already poisoned with the existing way of thinking.

For now we have Python, Ruby, Haskell, Erlang, Lisp as the better ways but these are slower and still carry some of the ugly while having their own issues. Eventually there will be some way to program that'll be even better yet.

Consider that there once was a time when the Roman Numeral system was all that was known. Lots was done with just that. Division and multiplication though were hard to do beyond the trivial cases. Roman Math

Then the Arabic number system that we use today was developed and the world changed for the better. We could use a similar change in programming.

There is hope.