Xref: utzoo comp.object:1658 comp.lang.c++:9212
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: What is Objective C?
Message-ID: <130@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 24 Aug 90 16:20:01 GMT
References: <3864@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <1990Aug23.151011.12954@chinet.chi.il.us>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Followup-To: comp.object
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 29

In article <1990Aug23.151011.12954@chinet.chi.il.us> patrickd@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Deupree) writes:
>In article <3864@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes:
>>
>>Well, the subject line says it all.  What is Objective C? How does it
>>compare with C++? What is the title of a good book?
>
>I believe that Objective C is an actual Object Oriented C compiler whereas
>C++ is a pre-processor.  This basically means that C++ code is translated
>into C code which is then compiled into a final form.  Some would argue that
>this makes it somewhat a kludge and they don't want to use it.

This is a compiler implementation issue.  Only some C++ compilers use C as
the 'assembly' language, others produce direct machine code.  [This is just
like some C compilers producing assembly output and running it through asm,
which some early UNIX C compilers did].

It is certainly not a requirement of C++ that it be compiled into C.

> Objective
>C is sometimes thought of as a more "pure" object oriented solution to
>C.  These issues arose in a heated discussion with one of our R&D folk when
>I said C++ wasn't bad and he talked of the virtues of Objective C.
 
The main difference is that Objective-C is a Smalltalk based extension to C,
while C++ is a Simula based extension to C.

The choice depends on whether you prefer the purely dynamic binding, tree
search style of method resolution; or a type-safe, fixed search style of
method resolution with optional static binding.