Why WebKit is written in C ++ and not in ObjectiveC

Question

Apple is the core strength of ObjectiveC.

However, WebKit is written in C ++.

Besides portability (not all systems have ObjectiveC / runtimes compilers) is there another reason? Performance, features?

Lately, Apple doesn't seem to care about languages ​​other than ObjectiveC.

Answer 1

Besides portability, the use of C ++ is a historical artifact. WebKit was not launched by Apple ; it was a KHTML fork that was developed as part of the KDE project. The decision to use C ++ was made by the KHTML team, probably because KDE itself was written in C ++ using the Qt framework .

Answer 2

WebKit was originally forked from KHTML, which is written in C ++. This and the fact that it is "more" portable (in fact, but it’s hard to find ObjC developers for other platforms), probably contributed to the fact that Apple did not rewrite it in ObjC. This turned out to be a good solution recently, after Google chose it for its Chrome browser, which led to several significant contributions and, consequently, to a very modern / built-in rendering.

Answer 3

WebKit is a KHTML fork written in C ++ ...

You ask me ... Why was KHTML written in C ++? I dont know.

Answer 4

The WebKit page opens. This is a branch of the KHTML library used by Konqueror, so Apple really had nothing to do with choosing the language in which it was written.