Rewrite it in Objective-C?
February 09, 2024
18 min
Free
rust
interoperability
memory-safety
objective-c
macos
developer-tools
programming-languages
cross-platform
software-architecture
runtime
Description
This talk delves into the challenges and nuances of using Rust for macOS development, particularly when interacting with Objective-C. It traces the history of Objective-C, its origins with Brad Cox and Smalltalk, and its significance in the development of NeXTSTEP and subsequently macOS. The presentation contrasts Rust's modern features like memory safety and strong compile-time guarantees with Objective-C's dynamic and often unsafe runtime. The speaker highlights the difficulties of integrating Rust with the macOS ecosystem due to Objective-C's pervasive influence and explores new developments like the `objective-c2` and `iate` crates, as well as potential Rust-Swift bindings, as ways to improve the developer experience and safety.