Objective-C Fundamentals

A short history of Objective-C
313
The language was first widely distributed as Smalltalk-80 in 1980, and ever since,
Smalltalk has left its mark on a number of more recent programming languages.
C.1.1
C.1.2
The origins of Objective-C
In the early 1980s, Dr. Brad Cox and his company, Stepstone Corporation, experimented
with adding Smalltalk-80-style object-oriented features to the preexisting and
popular C programming language. They soon had a working prototype, which they
called Object-Oriented Programming in C (OOPC).
This language continued to evolve, and in 1986, Brad Cox published Object-Oriented
Programming: An Evolutionary Approach, a book that outlines the original description of
what had by then become Objective-C. This was a clean layer of object-oriented features
on top of the C programming language. Early implementations consisted of a
preprocessor that turned Objective-C code into C source code, which was then processed
by a standard C compiler. Being a true superset of C, Objective-C had the
advantage of being familiar to existing C developers, making it possible to compile
any valid C program with an Objective-C compiler. This enabled a high level of code
reuse with existing C-based libraries.
Popularization via NeXT Inc.
In 1988, NeXT Inc. (founded by Steve Jobs when he left Apple in 1985) licensed
Objective-C from Stepstone Corporation and developed its own compiler and runtime
library for the language. The compiler and runtime library were used as the
foundations of the development environment for the NeXTStep operating system,
which powered its new, innovative, and some would say well-ahead-of-its-time, highend
workstations, such as the NeXT Computer and NeXTCube.
The NeXTStep operating system has a revered position in computer history. It garnered
widespread respect as an innovative platform, although it was also criticized for
its expensive price point compared to commodity IBM PCs of the day. But many innovations
in a number of fields are attributed to users of NeXTStep-based computers.
For example, Sir Tim Berners-Lee developed the first web browser on a NeXT computer
and had the following to say about the development experience:
I wrote the program using a NeXT computer. This had the advantage that there were some
great tools available—it was a great computing environment in general. In fact, I could do
in a couple of months what would take more like a year on other platforms, because on the
NeXT, a lot of it was done for me already.
“The WorldWideWeb Browser,”
(www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb)
Even the now classic DOOM and Quake games from id Software have elements of their
development history intertwined with Objective-C and NeXTStep hardware. John
Romero reflected recently on why he’s still passionate about NeXT computers these
many years later: