Is C similar to Objective-c ?

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Created Jun ’21

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Hello, I am software engineering student, and I am learning C, actually I have learned pretty much all the basics, will learning Objective-c be easy considering that I know C?

Answered by OOPer in 677748022

will learning Objective-c be easy considering that I know C?

Syntactically, Objective-C is an extension of C. So, some portion of Objective-C is exactly the same as C. Your experience of C would help learning such aspect of Objective-C.

But the core part of Objective-C programming is made of Object Oriented class system, which you cannot find in C. If you do not have any knowledge about Object Oriented Programming, you may find hard difficulties in that part.

If you have some knowledge about Smalltalk, it would help understanding OOP parts of Objective-C. Or if you know some OOP languages, such as Java or C#, that would also help learning Objective-C.

Conclusion, your knowledge of C would help learning Objective-C, but whether it is easy or not would depend on your other experiences or your way of thinking.

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Answer 1

OOPer OP

Jun ’21

Accepted Answer

will learning Objective-c be easy considering that I know C?

Syntactically, Objective-C is an extension of C. So, some portion of Objective-C is exactly the same as C. Your experience of C would help learning such aspect of Objective-C.

But the core part of Objective-C programming is made of Object Oriented class system, which you cannot find in C. If you do not have any knowledge about Object Oriented Programming, you may find hard difficulties in that part.

If you have some knowledge about Smalltalk, it would help understanding OOP parts of Objective-C. Or if you know some OOP languages, such as Java or C#, that would also help learning Objective-C.

Conclusion, your knowledge of C would help learning Objective-C, but whether it is easy or not would depend on your other experiences or your way of thinking.

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Answer 2

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Jun ’21

What OOPer said plus…

When you look at the Objective-C language as a whole, the vast majority of it is C. The “Objective-” part is a relatively small extension to the C language. So having a good grounding in C is a huge benefit when you learn Objective-C.

The size of that extension is also tiny when you compare it to the size of the platform APIs. If you know C and you want to learn Objective-C on an Apple platform, you’ll spend a small amount of time coming up to speed on Objective-C and a much greater amount of time learning the various platform APIs.

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