Objective-C Tuesdays: atomic and nonatomic properties

Every time I see something like this, I am reminded of my disappointment that such a great language (Objective-C) has somehow been relegated to the ghetto of platform-specific languages, in practice if not in technical truth. I would love to see growing interest in Objective-C development outside of the Apple platform space, where some of us who have little or no interest in Apple but could definitely benefit from the practical usability of a language like Objective-C would be able to do something with it.

When MacOS X first started popularizing Objective-C, I was hoping this would be a good thing for the language in general. Instead, it almost feels like the language has been turned into some kind of proprietary vertical developer community integration plot device, whose sole purpose is (apparently) to get developers locked into working for a single platform, much as VB has served for Microsoft.

Yeah. I'm disappointed, and I just felt like sharing.

I'm of the opinion that nonatomic should have been made the default. Most of the time, atomic properties aren't that useful as additional locking will need to be added anyway.