Objective-C

Objective-C is a programming language that builds upon the C language by adding object-oriented programming with Smalltalk-style messaging.

History

It was developed in the early 1980s and released in 1984. It was the language used by NeXT in its NeXTSTEP operating system. Until the introduction of Swift in 2014, Objective-C was the primary language supported by Apple for developing macOS and iOS applications. Even so, Objective-C is a very stable and well-tested platform, and much of macOS and iOS is still written in Objective-C, so its use is likely to continue for years to come.

Features

Objective-C is a superset of the C language, which means C code can be compiled with an Objective-C compiler, and C code can be freely used in an Objective-C class. It derives its object syntax from Smalltalk while all the syntax for non-object-oriented operations are identical to those of C.