Exploring the Foundation Framework

This book is about the Objective-C language; the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks are outside the scope of the book. However, the Foundation framework is relevant. The earliest guide to Objective-C, Object Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach by Brad J. Cox (who co-developed the language with Tom Love) was published in 1986. It describes Objective-C before the NeXT extensions and before the later extensions at Apple that culminated in Mac OS X and iOS. The objects and methods listed in this book for the most part are still part of the language today. They were organized into collections in 1986; today they are organized into frameworks, a somewhat different structure, but still an organizing tool for objects.