Sure, but I think it's fair to say that Objective-C only really hit the mainstream in recent years, with the increasing prominence of Apple technologies.
Even if your assumption Objective-C was only relevant after the release of iOS was correct, then Objective-C was still relevant since 2007. That's 7 years.
objective-c has a particular set of strengths that is well-suited to gui development. if you count its beginnings at next, it has been in use in this environment for over 20 years. there is no way in hell apple would abandon it now.
It's pretty far ahead right now but I think this trend is going to start to reverse pretty soon. The combination of Apple loosening their restrictions, technology like Appcelerator getting better and Android's success will make it hard for Objective-C to continue its rapid growth.
What's the status of Objective C language today? Is it fully supported forever or is it in legacy status waiting for its support to be dropped in the future?
I don't they'd ever deprecate Objective-C when so much of their internal software and the biggest apps are still 100% Objective-C. Objective-C support is a good counter-example to Apple supposedly deprecating things.
I wonder how likely it'll be they keep Objective-C support. Ultimately, there's a huge amount of useful legacy code available they would be throwing away.
I think the way it's set up right now with interoperability works pretty well, and using it for new apps is a great idea, but forcing people to throw away existing apps that have been around for years.
Apple is supporting Objective-C out of necessity (both for themselves and others). It's still very clear where the future of iOS development lies, and how few disadvantages there are.
That they continue to support Objective-C has little to do with whether or not you should be using it. You should, clearly.
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