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    <p>No language is perfect for all tasks, and Objective-C is no exception, but there are some very specific niceties. Like using <code>LINQ</code> and <code>var</code> (for which I'm not aware of a direct replacement), some of these are strictly language-related, and others are framework-related.</p> <p>(<strong>NOTE:</strong> Just as C# is tightly coupled with .NET, Objective-C is tightly coupled with Cocoa. Hence, some of my points may seem unrelated to Objective-C, but Objective-C without Cocoa is akin to C# without .NET / WPF / LINQ, running under Mono, etc. It's just not the way things are usually done.)</p> <p>I won't pretend to fully elaborate the differences, pros, and cons, but here are some that jump to mind.</p> <ul> <li><p>One of the best parts of Objective-C is the dynamic nature — rather than calling methods, you send messages, which the runtime routes dynamically. Combined (judiciously) with dynamic typing, this can make a lot of powerful patterns simpler or even trivial to implement.</p></li> <li><p>As a strict superset of C, Objective-C trusts that you know what you're doing. Unlike the managed and/or typesafe approach of languages like C# and Java, Objective-C lets you do what you want and experience the consequences. Obviously this can be dangerous at times, but the fact that the language doesn't actively prevent you from doing most things is quite powerful. (<strong>EDIT:</strong> I should clarify that C# also has "unsafe" features and functionality, but they default behavior is managed code, which you have to explicitly opt out of. By comparison, Java <strong>only</strong> allows for typesafe code, and never exposes raw pointers in the way that C and others do.)</p></li> <li><p>Categories (adding/modifying methods on a class without subclassing or having access to source) is an awesome double-edged sword. It can vastly simplify inheritance hierarchies and eliminate code, but if you do something strange, the results can sometimes be baffling.</p></li> <li><p>Cocoa makes creating GUI apps much simpler in many ways, but you do have to wrap your head around the paradigm. MVC design is pervasive in Cocoa, and patterns such as delegates, notifications, and multi-threaded GUI apps are well-suited to Objective-C.</p></li> <li><p>Cocoa bindings and key-value observing can eliminate tons of glue code, and the Cocoa frameworks leverage this extensively. Objective-C's dynamic dispatch works hand-in-hand with this, so the type of the object doesn't matter as long as it's key-value compliant.</p></li> <li><p>You will likely miss generics and namespaces, and they have their benefits, but in the Objective-C mindset and paradigm, they would be niceties rather than necessities. (Generics are all about type safety and avoiding casting, but dynamic typing in Objective-C makes this essentially a non-issue. Namespaces would be nice if done well, but it's simple enough to avoid conflicts that the cost arguably outweighs the benefits, especially for legacy code.)</p></li> <li><p>For concurrency, Blocks (a new language feature in Snow Leopard, and implemented in scores of Cocoa APIs) are extremely useful. A few lines (frequently coupled with Grand Central Dispatch, which is part of libsystem on 10.6) can eliminates significant boilerplate of callback functions, context, etc. (Blocks can also be used in C and C++, and could certainly be added to C#, which would be awesome.) NSOperationQueue is also a very convenient way to add concurrency to your own code, by dispatching either custom NSOperation subclasses or anonymous blocks which GCD automatically executes on one or more different threads for you.</p></li> </ul>
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    1. POHow does Objective-C compare to C#?
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    1. USQuinn Taylor
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    1. POHow does Objective-C compare to C#?
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    1. COTechnically, C# has all non-type-safe power features that ObjC does: raw pointers, pointer arithmetic, bound-unchecked arrays, unions, `alloca`. It just doesn't make them as readily accessible - you need to opt in explicitly.
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      1. USPavel Minaev
    2. COAlso, your points on Cocoa are obviously applicable to Cocoa, rather than ObjC (there are other language bindings for Cocoa). It's also not clear what you're comparing Cocoa against - for example, WPF has everything you list as well.
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      1. USPavel Minaev
    3. COI simply mention Cocoa because most of the appeal of programming in Objective-C is due to the Cocoa frameworks. Would C# be interesting without .NET and/or WPF? The asker specifically mentioned LINQ, so he's obviously looking beyond the language, to the experience.
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