"The argument to this method is -- as conveniently indicated by the method name (I love that about Objective-C) -- an NSRange"

And by saying "i love this about Objective-C" i wasn't trying to bring up any weighty issues of differences between OO lannguages. I was just stating that i like how readable and unambiguous (mostly, anyway) method names and code are. I realize this is a result of the guys at NeXT and Apple, and is feature of Cocoa, rather than ObjC; I guess i was too loose with my language.

By the way, i never claimed to be an expert at OOP. I said this in my first column, and my intent here has never been to project myself as such. I feel i have a good grasp on it, but i don't have the experience to debate the differences between SmallTalk and Objective-C. I'm just trying to relay to people starting out with Cocoa and Mac OS X development how to use Cocoa and how things fit together as i see it.

Its obvious that you have WAY more experience than me, so i'd love to keep the discussion going to learn more.