Last week, we presented the String class, which gifts the standard Cocoa NSString class with such modern conveniences as operator overloading, allowing the developer to focus more on clearly expressing the intent of the code, and less on arcane 1980s syntax. Today, we're going to look at another Cocoa class in dire need of some help: NSNumber.

We've spent the last month or so considering all the interesting ways that one can use Apple's Objective-C++ compiler to improve Cocoa code. But so far, we've ignored perhaps the most interesting way: using C++ wrappers to improve the standard Cocoa classes.

For the last several weeks, we've been going over how C++ can be mixed with the traditional Objective-C to make your Cocoa even sweeter. But today we're going to cover a somewhat different recipe: mostly C++, with just enough Objective-C to make it work on iOS.

Last week, we gave an overview of how a little sprinkling of C++ could make your Cocoa programming a lot sweeter.  At the end we promised to delve more into details in future blog posts.  So, here we go!  We're going to begin with a little bit of relevant history.

In 2002, Apple quietly introduced the Objective-C++ compiler. Almost nobody noticed. This is a shame, because adding a little bit of C++ to your Objective-C programming can make your code shorter, clearer, more type-safe, faster, and easier to read and write. It is nothing short of revolutionary.