So the thesis is the only reason they would switch to LLVM is if they wanted to abstract away from Objective-C?
I'm no compiler expert but I do know Apple rolled out Automatic Reference Counting in 2011 (one year after this post), a pretty f'ing massive compiler-based feature. That was probably the biggest leap forward in Objective-C in a decade. For those not familiar, that's the thing that automates memory management but without the runtime overhead of garbage collection, instead using static code analysis to figure out where to compile in the commands to release memory. So I'm guessing LLVM had something to do with that.
I'm no compiler expert but I do know Apple rolled out Automatic Reference Counting in 2011 (one year after this post), a pretty f'ing massive compiler-based feature. That was probably the biggest leap forward in Objective-C in a decade. For those not familiar, that's the thing that automates memory management but without the runtime overhead of garbage collection, instead using static code analysis to figure out where to compile in the commands to release memory. So I'm guessing LLVM had something to do with that.