Re: Problem with Obj-C was Anybody try CodeWarrior for Linux?

[Nelson Minar]

For a bit of historical perspective, the choice of Objective C was
always a compromise. When we sat down to start writing Swarm (in 1994)
we couldn't find a language that suited our purposes. C++ was simply
not appropriate. We thought about CLOS, or Smalltalk, or a bunch of
other researchy languages, but those all seemed to obscure.

So our plan was to write our own language, based on C. Roger and I got
about halfway through designing it. Then we took a look and realized
that the language we designed was close enough to Objective C that we
should just use that.

And as funky as Objective C is at times, I think we made the right
choice. Yes, it's a bit obscure, but the language is simple and the
support that is there is pretty good. Yes, it's kind of GNU/Unix
centric - but until recently, we never even considered running Swarm
on Windows. The good side is that it works quite well, and Swarm does
some awfully nifty things that normal C systems couldn't touch.

If I were to start today, I'd use Java. That wasn't an option when we
started. For what it's worth, Swarm is headed in the Java direction.

                                                  address@hidden
.       .      .     .    .   .  . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/

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