# Objective-C 72 Hacker News commenters recommended Objective-C and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 24 years (4 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Smalltalk-style messaging added to C, praised for Cocoa UI work and easy C interop. Common caveats: clunky bracket syntax, heavy boilerplate and loose typing. ## Why people recommend it - Smalltalk-style dynamic messaging on C (5 comments): "I think it's a great language! As long as you can tolerate dynamic dispatch, you really do get the best of C/C++ combined with its run-time manipulable object type system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47068710)) "Adding Smalltalk message passing as an extension to C was very clever and allowed writing very efficient code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47590032)) "The only value I see out of Objective-C on its own is as a performant and compromising Smalltalk." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46847783)) - Pleasant once you get used to it (3 comments): "At first I had the usual revulsion to the syntax, but after a few days getting used to it, I actually don't mind it at all now." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47220701)) "really quite pleasant once you get used to it, especially compared to other languages from the same time period" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47068738)) "One of the final jigsaw pieces turning it into a really pleasant language." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47219919)) - Superset of C with easy C calls (3 comments): "One of the things I miss about Objective C is just how easy it is to call into a C API" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47221052)) "as a direct superset of C, is that you can identify the slow parts of your app" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47226778)) "That's a design feature and it's huge. It made interoperability trivial." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49155203)) - Well suited to UI frameworks (4 comments): "NeXTStep and Cocoa/CocoaTouch, arguably the most elegant pieces of OS-level/UI-framework software ever, were written in Objective-C" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49154152)) "i find it amazing that an os-level 3d graphics api can be built in such a dynamic language as objective-c" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307698)) "development of UI software is one of those areas where object oriented software really shines" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47070284)) ## What people warn about - Bolted-on bracket and @ syntax (2 comments): "I don't miss @ and [] all over the place, even if Objective-C has some cool ideas into it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229729)) "The problem with ObjC was mainly syntax, bolted on over many years on top of a C core." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49152626)) - Heavy boilerplate and header files (3 comments): "the insane amount of boilerplate prototyping and headers required to use it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47219837)) "I don't miss maintaining header files or having to operate in old codebases that badly manage Obj-C's looseness" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47220710)) "I remember looking at it and thinking it was pretty fragile and boilerplate-y" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331917)) - Loose typing and null-related crashes (3 comments): "does not prevent crashing when addressing an already released object" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47221784)) "There were no types in the whole file, everything was an 'id' (aka void*) and there were 'isKindOfClass' and null checks all over the place." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446131)) "unexpected null can still cause bugs in ObjC when the developer isn’t paying attention" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47221106)) - Tied to Apple platforms (2 comments): "it was locked inside the Apple ecosystem, and Apple made no serious effort to change that" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243163)) "Obj-C is unusable for many new Apple platform features. Not suitable for building anymore." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124564)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend - [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend - [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend - [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend - [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Objective-C", https://hackerapproved.com/p/objective-c/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).