I had hoped ObjCs successor for app development would be something like FScript. Something that removed the footguns and unnecessary ceremony from ObjC but that had good interop with existing code.

Instead we got Swift, which ironically, given its uptake by external devs, I think was aimed at complaints from internal Apple users. Internal users at Apple were frustrated by how easy it was for external devs to introspect and modify private ObjC framework code. They also wanted performance features like value types and method inlining.

I don’t think many external app devs cared about those things, or to the extent they did C++ was an attractive option because a stable ABI doesn’t really matter internal to application code.

I continue to use ObjC for Mac and iOS dev because it’s a much simpler language than Swift, the system APIs I interact with are still implemented in ObjC, and C++ interop is easier via ObjC++. I suppose the day will come where I need something that is only accessible from Swift, and I’ll write Swift then, but for now Swift doesn’t solve any problems that I have.