Objective-C
Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXTSTEP operating system. Due to Apple macOS’s direct lineage from NeXTSTEP, Objective-C was the standard programming language used, supported, and promoted by Apple for developing macOS and iOS applications (via their respective APIs, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch) until the introduction of the Swift programming language in 2014. Thereafter, its usage has been consistently declining among developers and it has often been described as a "dying" language.
| Family | C |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Tom Love and Brad Cox |
| First appeared | 1984 |
| Stable release | 2.0
|
| Typing discipline | Static, dynamic, weak |
| OS | Cross-platform |
| Filename extensions | .h, .m, .mm, .M |
| Website | developer.apple.com |
| Major implementations | |
| Clang, GCC | |
| Influenced by | |
| C, Smalltalk | |
| Influenced | |
| Groovy, Java, Nu, Objective-J, TOM, Swift | |
| |
Objective-C programs developed for non-Apple operating systems or that are not dependent on Apple's APIs may also be compiled for any platform supported by GNU GCC or LLVM/Clang.
Objective-C source code 'messaging/implementation' program files usually have .m filename extensions, while Objective-C 'header/interface' files have .h extensions, the same as C header files. Objective-C++ files are denoted with a .mm file extension.