On Java, C#, Objective-C and C++

Ale
Objective-C, image taken from bigspaceship.com.
Objective-C, image taken from bigspaceship.com.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. It’s something that comes up rather frequently at work, so I though I’d write it down to organize what’s on my mind.

Contrary to what many may think, the Java and C# languages are not based on C++ as much as on Objective-C. Indeed, Objective-C was a big influence in the design of the Java programming language. And since C# 1.0 was basically Microsoft’s Java, we shall consider it another derived language too.

So, why do people think of Java as a C++-derived language? Java was built on C++’s syntax, this is why Java code “looks like” C++ code. Java’s semantics, however, are heavily based on Objective-C’s.

Some Java and C# features borrowed directly from Objective-C include:

  • Dynamic binding.
  • Dynamic loading.
  • Single inheritance.
  • Interfaces (called “protocols” in Objective-C).
  • Large runtime.
  • “Class” objects.
  • Reflection.
  • Objects cannot be allocated in the stack.
  • Garbage Collection (deprecated in Objective-C).
  • All methods virtual by default (Java).
  • Properties (C#).
  • int, float, double, etc. wrapper classes.

Patrick Naughton, one of the original designers of the Java programming language, confirms this story in this discussion on usenet:

Usually, this kind of urban legend stuff turns out to be completely inaccurate, but in this case, they are right on. When I left Sun to go to NeXT, I thought Objective-C was the coolest thing since sliced bread, and I hated C++. So, naturally when I stayed to start the (eventually) Java project, Obj-C had a big influence. James Gosling, being much older than I was, he had lots of experience with SmallTalk and Simula68, which we also borrowed from liberally.

The other influence, was that we had lots of friends working at NeXT at the time, whose faith in the black cube was flagging. Bruce Martin was working on the NeXTStep 486 port, Peter King, Mike Demoney, and John Seamons were working on the mysterious (and never shipped) NRW (NeXT RISC Workstation, 88110???). They all joined us in late ’92 – early ’93 after we had written the first version of Oak. I’m pretty sure that Java’s ‘interface’ is a direct rip-off of Obj-C’s ‘protocol’ which was largely designed by these ex-NeXT’ers… Many of those strange primitive wrapper classes, like Integer and Number came from Lee Boynton, one of the early NeXT Obj-C class library guys who hated ‘int’ and ‘float’ types.

So, next time you look at Objective-C thinking how weird its syntax looks, remember this story and consider how much it influenced the programming language landscape.