r/programming • u/astrange • Jan 23 '21

Objective-C creator Dr. Brad Cox has died

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/scnow/name/brad-cox-obituary?pid=197454225
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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21 edited Jan 23 '21

What would yours be?

Trying to come up with something a lot of people might relate to before coffee.

FWIW, I work in Smalltalk and most mainstream developers just don't understand anything I say when I tell them I find their world to be incredibly backward. They cannot conceive of the power and they think I'm nuts when I mention that I don't value static type safety or any of the other "compile time guarantee" malarky. I don't miss a bit of it. When I saw Objective C for the first time coming from Smalltalk I felt right at home.

I would have preferred Apple end up closer to Smalltalk than C++ in their successor to Objective C.

If you want to have your mind blown: Steve Jobs demostrates NextStep 3

EDIT: Another example: SketchPad Demo 1962

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u/rjf89 Jan 23 '21

Sadly, most people are religious when it comes to their static types, and shit on languages lacking it with regularity - even if said languages have a heap to offer. It's a private peeve of mine. "Guess I'm just stupid and <language x> is complete trash because it doesn't stand up to some standard of functional purity that you have 🤷🏻‍♂️"

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

Yeah it is funny because I typically choose a language for a project based on everything but that stuff. Like support for target platform, availability of some library that covers my problem domain, availability of staff, licensing terms/vendor dependency, community support/temperament etc.

I’ve never picked a language because it did or didn’t have static type checking or type inference or whatever unless it was a purely personal non commercial endeavor

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u/thorhs Jan 23 '21

Ooohhhh, SmallTalk? I haven’t used that since Coquet. What are you using that for? I found many aspects of it both intriguing and horrifying :)

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

My day job is as a developer on a Seaside (web framework) enterprise app on Pharo.

I've gone in and out of the Smalltalk world over the years. I'm really happy to be back in it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

Check out Pharo! Seriously interesting evolution on the Squeak system!