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From: johnson@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: C++ vs. "Objective C"
Message-ID: <116900005@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 10 Aug 89 13:46:00 GMT
Lines: 20
Nf-ID: #R:The main reason behind this is probably due to the fact that C++ is a
>fairly recent beast. When work was begun on the NeXT and NeXTStep
>(about 3 or so years ago) C++ was not really a consideration.
>Originally there was even a lot of talk about using Smalltalk as the
>native software environment. Thank goodness they at least picked a
>flavor of C! Up until recently the only people who had a good C++
>compiler [CFront] working was (believe it or not) Apple Computer Inc.
I have been using reliable (though not bug-free) cfront compilers for
several years. I've never used one by Apple.
Smalltalk is my favorite language. I don't buy machines that don't run
it. Current implementations are certainly slower than C++. There are
also problems linking with other languages. However, Objective C
messaging is no faster than Smalltalk messaging. The only speed
improvement comes from having fewer messages. On the other hand,
C++ is easy to make fast.