Objective-C Part 1: the Basics of Objects and Classes

So, I have been asked to write a post explaining Objective-C. Objective-C is not an easy language to learn; I learned it by reading the several hundred paged language documentation on the Apple iPhone developer website. Yes, I did it in an afternoon, but it was not an easy afternoon. Objective-C is difficult because of what it is: a layer built on top of C; it cannot use syntax that would conflict with the existing C syntax. Objective-C is also, apparently, a dynamic language. The design of Objective-C is very different from, say, ActionScript or Java. I’m not sure how to really go about explaining this language, as I do not really have any good ideas for a tutorial project. I guess I can try to do this as a series of posts, and so, I will start with the basic concept of objects in this language.

Argh.

Ok. Background: I am an intern at radical media. It is a fun internship, I have learned flash programming and broke an enormous mirror. Anyway, I am working on a project to control a USB missile launcher.
Here is the structure:
Linux system running inside parallels on a mac, called missile-launcher
missile-launcher runs my modifications of this program. My modifications change the way the network portion work to use a tcp system. This program is missile.py.
On another server, missilecommand, there is MissileControl.swf, which is a flash program that talks to missile.py on missile-launcher. MissileControl works nicely, however, next week, I am going to make it have a lock system, so only one person at a time will be able to control it. I still have to think about how to do this though.
I’ve also been tasked with writing an iPhone app to control this thing. I tried to do it as a web app, but javascript doesn’t do sockets, afaik. Oh well. I am going to have to learn objective-C.
Anyway, I was trying to use a python program called orbited to make a javascript socket proxy, but it doesn’t seem to work. Maybe I am not doing it right, maybe it doesn’t work the way I need it too. Now I have a headache from this.