Le Club Macintosh de MontrƯal Publication: InterFace Issue: May 1992 Author: John Markle Series: NeXTanswers Title: None ------------------------------------ NeXTanswers Answers to questions about the NeXT computer What languages does NeXTstep support? "NeXTstep/Interface Builder's native language is Objective C, based on ANSI C. Unlike C++, Objective C is extremely easy for C programmers to learn, since it adds only a small set of extensions to standard C. Beyond ease of learning, NeXT chose Objective C because of its support for dynamic binding. Dynamic binding allows developers to generalize programs so that they can handle a wide variety of object types without knowing all the possibilities ahead of time. "Third parties support many other languages including Pascal, Common Lisp, Ada, Eiffel, BASIC, FORTRAN, and COBOL. Absoft Corporation's object-oriented FORTRAN 77 offers access to standard UNIX tools and supports Interface Builder. "Developers can access applications written in languages that do not support Interface Builder directly. Through interapplications messaging, NeXTstep allows applications to be written in any language available on the NeXT platform. Custom Interface Builder programs can message applications written in any of these languages; to an end-user, it appears as if the program and the interface are one, seamless application." The NeXTstep Decision: Object-Oriented Applications Development With NeXTstep, p.9 NeXT Computer, Inc., December 1991 Can NeXTstep support client-server computing? Are NeXTstep applications scaleable? "Through support for TCP/IP, SQL, and Sun's RPC, NeXTstep applications are client/server ready. Mach's messaging facility provides very fast interprocess communications. Through RPC, NeXTstep applications can support cooperating processes on networked machines, from local UNIX-based servers to remote Cray supercomputers. NeXTstep's messaging facilities provide an ideal mechanism for integrating easy-to-use interfaces running locally with compute-intensive code running on remote cycle-servers, all within an easy-to-maintain NeXTstep application framework." The NeXTstep Decision: Object-Oriented Applications Development With NeXTstep, p.10 NeXT Computer, Inc., December 1991 [Interface, May 1992]