Why is Objective-C not very popular outside of the Apple community? [closed]

Question

Another way of thinking about this question might be: why did C++, rather than Objective-C, become the "Object-Oriented C"?

I learned C++ in 1991, and remember that C++ seemed like the hot thing while Objective-C was this weird little language that no-one (other than NeXT) wanted to use. I've been trying to remember why, and I think it boils down to 4 things (5, if you include C++ having AT&T behind it):

1. Features: C++ had, even then, a much richer set of features than Objective-C.
2. Syntax: Objective-C's syntax is a much bigger change from C than is C++.
3. Performance: Stroustrup focused on making C++ features easily mappable to C, so that (in theory!) there was no performance penalty in using C++. And with judicious use of the "inline" keyword, you could even get better performance with C++ than with C. Even now, there is no way I would use Objective-C in a project where performance was critical.
4. Style: Relatively strong, static typing was the fashion (for good reasons).

So compared to Objective-C, C++ in the early '90s gave you more features with less of a performance penalty, with a syntax that was both fashionable and more familiar than Objective-C's.

This is a complicated question; but in short; I think the answer most likely lies in the age of the operating systems, and their roots.

• UNIX is C, so that's that.
• Linux is envisioned as a straight-up clone of Unix, (Fine, this is slightly inaccurate, but close enough for this discussion) and as such, it is more or less written in C.

• Windows is an old operating system; and one that is built by stacking hack upon hack going back all the way to Windows 3.1. C++ is heavily favored, and in .NET, C#.

  This new influx is of course based on whatever agenda Microsoft has with that platform.

• Mac OS X; on the other hand, is a (comparatively) young operating system, and its new parts (while still quite old, being inherited from the NeXT and whatnot) are all based on Objective-C because, "Hey! Why not?".

  As backwards compatibility was not among the list of priorities with Mac OS X 10.0; the C/C++-based Toolbox and Carbon got the short end of the stick, and the entire operating system was more or less made as a reskinned version of NeXTStep.

The issue with Obj-C is that the power of the language comes mostly from the sizable frameworks, the generally high level of integration into the system, and so on. It's almost impossible to get a good jive like that going without a clean break from backwards compatibility and, as such, it would never really stand a chance on any platform that didn't dare to do this. Apple, with a small (at the time) and devoted user base, dared do this, and struck gold.

Microsoft is now trying, but are, in my humble opinion, failing. ("Failing?! .NET!? HOW DARE YOU!?": With 4 major revisions in about 8 years, they are doing more growing than maturation; which may be a good thing, if they can turn it around.)

Edit: There are some projects attempting to port OpenStep to Linux, but they are a bit clunky and hard to use; there are also smaller projects on NS/OS-likes with smaller problem domains, but it's uphill work.

I was recently standing in a bookshop reading Masterminds of Programming where the creators of programming languages talk about their creations. There was one chapter about Objective-C where Tom Love (one of the creator of Objective-C, along with Brad Cox) was asked why C++ had gone so far, while Objective-C hadn't:

Why do you think that C++ was used more frequently than Objective-C?

Tom: It had the AT&T moniker behind it.

Just that?

Tom: I think so.

What do you think about Objective-C today?

Tom: It still exists. How about that?

Objective-C is nothing but a thin layer(a bit thicker with 2.0) of syntactic sugar for message passing on top of standard C. Even the most basic object orientation is provided by the runtime library, which was proprietary for a long time. Inertia is an important factor in language use.

It shines especially on GUIs, but the only toolkits that support it are Apple's and the mostly unknown and catchup-playing GNUStep.

While there is some value for Objective-C outside of GUIs, and I think people would use the extensions were they imported to C, even in system code, there is little reason to choose it over alternatives, when little of your system is meant to work with it.

Off the top of my head, I believe C++ is older than Objective-C, and not only for this reason has a much bigger user base. Everywhere that OC may have come, C++ was already there :)

Also, C++ has more features. Many people are impressed by lots of features. And it's had more research and development poured into it... and so forth. Essentially, momentum.