[HN Gopher] Brad Cox, creator of Objective-C, has passed away
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Brad Cox, creator of Objective-C, has passed away
Author : carlosrg
Score : 170 points
Date : 2021-01-22 21:54 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.legacy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.legacy.com)
| armadsen wrote:
| Objective-C is the programming language that made me fall in love
| with programming, and led to my career for the past 14 years.
|
| I never met Brad Cox, but the work he did to create it has had a
| huge impact on my life. Watching his long interview with the
| computer history museum was a delight and made me feel like I
| knew him just a little.
|
| Sincere condolences to his family and friends.
| bartmika wrote:
| > On one scuba diving excursion while in the compound having
| lunch, Brad engaged a couple from Germany in conversation. Brad
| asked about the fellow travelers occupation and discovered he was
| a computer programmer. Lifewise, Brad was asked about his life's
| work and stated I am also a computer programmer. "What do you
| do?" Brad was asked. I wrote Objective-C. Astonished, the
| gentlerman said, "No, Brad Cox wrote that". "Hi, I am Brad Cox",
| was the response and the introduction.
|
| Wonderful story. I wish his family all the best.
|
| I love Objective-C and consider it a beautiful language. Back in
| the day I re-discovered my love for programming when I started to
| learn this language. This was when I was still in the Java world.
|
| As a side project I tried to build a drone (unmanned navel
| vehicle) powered by objective-c. I have abandoned the effort but
| posted the code on GitHub - it was a joy to work with the
| language and the funnest side project I've worked with.
|
| These days I work with python and golang for job/hobby but I
| always am grateful to have spent time with objective-c.
| Reflecting back if I haven't spent time with this language, today
| I would of not been a programmer.
|
| Thank you Brad Cox for your work and positive influence.
| dilap wrote:
| Great language. Amazing bang for the buck. RIP.
| kdavis wrote:
| Many moons ago I used to work with Brad in DC. He never let on
| that he was a world famous computer scientist. He slinged code
| shoulder to shoulder with us plebes.
|
| He was a Mensch.
| cxr wrote:
| I mentioned Brad Cox's "software ICs" today on the phone in a
| conversation about big ideas in programming, not knowing that
| he'd passed away a couple weeks ago.
|
| Here's the Objective-C paper at last year's HOPL:
|
| "The origins of Objective-C at PPI/Stepstone and its evolution at
| NeXT"
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386332
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23516334
| Austin_Conlon wrote:
| Computer History Museum interview with him:
| http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201....
| sigzero wrote:
| Wow, so very sad.
| [deleted]
| msie wrote:
| [me say:"Oh no! This sucks."];
|
| I loved his little book on Objective-C.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| He was bold enough to create a DSL starting from C. Too many
| black bar-worthy losses lately.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| There's an extended interview with him about Objective-C in the
| book "Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators
| of Major Programming Languages": https://amzn.to/3iEYfGh
| robbyking wrote:
| I love the quote from him where he says "languages are mere tools
| for building and combining parts of software." I think a lot of
| new developers get hung up on Language A vs. Language B (or OS A
| vs. OS B), so I hope this helps them realize that the languages
| are just tools you have in your toolbox, and that they should be
| open to switching between (and learning new) languages as needed.
| dwheeler wrote:
| Very sad. I had the privilege of taking a class from him at
| George Mason University, and he was (unsurprisingly) very
| knowledgeable.
|
| He worked hard to enable software reuse. No one was interested in
| his idea of trying to monitor component use during runtime to pay
| developers. That was an unworkable approach, and I told him that
| then. But the general world of making it easy to reuse components
| _is_ a reality today, via open source software and package
| managers.
|
| So, a hat-tip to him and all the other pioneers who helped make
| the world a better place.
| sidpatil wrote:
| > No one was interested in his idea of trying to monitor
| component use during runtime to pay developers.
|
| This reminds me of Project Xanadu's ideas about transclusions
| and associated royalties.
|
| What a coincidence that this was posted recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25875386
| btilly wrote:
| Does anyone know what he died of?
|
| Given current events, my assumption is COVID-19. But I know that
| I'm assuming that too often. Old people do die of other things.
| jhbadger wrote:
| I always liked his analogy for object oriented programming as
| "software ICs" -- just as in hardware development, you don't have
| to worry about what goes on in a chip (just what it takes as
| input and gives as output), so too a well designed object works.
| lytol wrote:
| Interestingly, I feel like this comparison to an IC and
| input(s) -> output(s) is more akin to functional approaches,
| and many people complain about OOP being the opposite.
|
| To quote Joe Armstrong:
|
| > I think the lack of reusability comes in object-oriented
| languages, not functional languages. Because the problem with
| object-oriented languages is they've got all this implicit
| environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a
| banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and
| the entire jungle. If you have referentially transparent code,
| if you have pure functions -- all the data comes in its input
| arguments and everything goes out and leave no state behind --
| it's incredibly reusable.
| moron4hire wrote:
| My reaction to PT fundamentalists is always the same. "Jesus,
| what the hell have I been doing, reusing all this unreusable
| OOP code?"
| smaili wrote:
| Very sad, rest in peace and thank you for all your contributions.
| throw03172019 wrote:
| RIP. Objective-C was my first language and I enjoyed it even with
| manual memory management!
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