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Simple question, I'm just looking for a yes or no clarification. A citation would be appreciated but not necessary.

Bonus Question - Can Objective-C be used on Windows, or only on Mac OS?

Moshe
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    Please post your "bonus question" as a separate question. – Adam Goode Jan 01 '10 at 04:15
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    Adam - It's a duplicate though. – Moshe Jan 01 '10 at 04:17
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    @Greg - As a "bonus Question" I can get away with it. As a fresh one, I don't stand a chance. I also thought of it while typing up this one. Also - I'm researching iPhone development and I want to learn objective-c for that reason. – Moshe Jan 01 '10 at 04:22
  • It sounds like you're really looking for this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/113547/iphone-development-on-windows – Greg Hewgill Jan 01 '10 at 04:25
  • You are absolutely not going to build any iPhone apps on Windows if that's what all these silly threads are leading up to. – Azeem.Butt Jan 01 '10 at 04:59

7 Answers7

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No.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_%28programming_language%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C

Bonus: Objective-C can be compiled by GCC, which can run on Windows.

Dan Lorenc
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No. Essentially: Objective C is from Apple and C# is from Microsoft. That's a gross oversimplification, but it's close enough.

Ry4an Brase
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  • +1 for the courage to make a gross oversimplification that is, nevertheless as you say, close enough. – President James K. Polk Jan 01 '10 at 04:19
  • I actually am told by some friends that I am the 'master of simplification' lol. I just need to learn a new language, get a new computer and then voila, an iPhone app! It should take... um ... a few hours... lol – Moshe Jan 01 '10 at 04:23
  • Thanks, GregS. I thought I was going to be eviscerated for that one. Glad to see it was read in the hasty spirit it was intended. – Ry4an Brase Jan 01 '10 at 04:29
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No. Objective-C was developed around the same time as C++ (late 1980s), and C# was developed much more recently (early 2000s).

Greg Hewgill
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Objective C can be thought of as a thin layer on top of 'C'. It was designed in the early '80s and Steve Jobs used it for the NeXT development. Since OSX is built upon that foundation, Mac / iPhone development use Objective C

Wenzi
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Essentially:

Objective-C is an object-oriented layer on top of C. It's a combination of C and Smalltalk.

C# is a reworking of Java, which is a simplification of C++, which is a different object-oriented layer on top of C.

They're cousins -- both come from C originally -- but they went down different paths.

Chip Uni
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So, the difference between the two is clear.

Can you use Objective C on platform X? Of course, it's in gcc, but the only current platform that has really good Objective C libraries is OS X, although there is GnuSTEP (which is not really mature). So, it really depends on what you want to do with the language.

Andrew McGregor
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The answer is no. The two languages aren't the same. One very important difference to note is that Objective C uses a very thin run-time system to run iOS applications while C# targets Common Language Runtime (CLR) which is a full blown virtual execution system (VES).

Objective C likely to get overshadowed by swift language which is a new offering from Apple targeting iOS platform.

RBT
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