An Objective-C-like language wasn't the goal, but it happened to be a great fit for a couple reasons:
1. We wanted to add the same features to JavaScript that Objective-C added to C, namely classical inheritance, while remaining a strict superset of the language. The first language we prototyped actually looked more like Java.
2. Cappuccino's APIs are similar to Cocoa's, so it's a natural fit, rather than having to translate all the method names to JS identifiers (a la PyObjC or RubyCocoa)
That said, a lot of people share your opinion, so I'd like to provide pure JavaScript bindings to Cappuccino. IMHO it won't be as nice of an experience, but some people will be willing to make that tradeoff to avoid learning a new language.
1. We wanted to add the same features to JavaScript that Objective-C added to C, namely classical inheritance, while remaining a strict superset of the language. The first language we prototyped actually looked more like Java.
2. Cappuccino's APIs are similar to Cocoa's, so it's a natural fit, rather than having to translate all the method names to JS identifiers (a la PyObjC or RubyCocoa)
That said, a lot of people share your opinion, so I'd like to provide pure JavaScript bindings to Cappuccino. IMHO it won't be as nice of an experience, but some people will be willing to make that tradeoff to avoid learning a new language.