From the horse’s mouth…

Garbage Collection is coming to Objective-C/Cocoa.

Since yesterday, when Slashdot picked up the article linked above, everyone’s arguing whether Objective-C and Cocoa stands up to C#/.NET as a development platform.

I, for one, hope Apple continues with Objective-C as the language for Cocoa in the foreseeable future. Mainly because there’s not currently any clear alternative. If there’s not a clear alternative… stay the course.

Despite its age, Objective-C has a nice balance of speed, object-orientation, ease of learning, and ease of use. Did I mention it’s FAST (at least compared to a managed language like Python, Java or C# — don’t let anyone tell you different)? Also, one can learn 80% of what it takes to program Objective-C in an afternoon… it’s just that easy. No other language currently fits the bill. Not Python, not Ruby, not Java, not C#… sorry.

That said… I do hope in the future that Apple develops their own version of a language-independent CLR. Language independence is a huge advantage for MS.

Keep in mind that despite my love for Cocoa/ObjC, I’m certainly no .NET hater… Actually, Santa brought a couple of C# books…