Little Boxes

Geekery / July 30, 2008 / John / 3

I was speaking to Mr Daniels today and waxing lyrical, as is my wont, about the lovely messaging system in objective C. He commented that something I said was a really nice metaphor so I thought I’d post it here.

Objective C, as you might know, uses square braces (these []) as part of its syntax for sending messages. For example:

[myObject init];

Well, it occurred to me that those square brackets make the object and the message look like they’re in a wee box – so when you ask an object for an answer, the question just kinda falls out of the box. Like this:

theAnswer = [myObject whatsYourFavouriteColor];

That’s all it was – but he’s right enough – it helps to make things easy. You drop the question into the box beside the object and the answer falls out the other end 🙂

John

UNIX geek, wannabe cook, musician, book-lover, and all round good-guy.