>I do think a large part of that is due to lack of generics that allow the code to recursively deserialize nested classes and collections without any extra boilerplate other than the class definitions.

Huh? Completely automatic serialization (called activation/passivation) was in the original Stepstone Objective-C, described in Brad Cox's book[1]. No generics required at all, just a modicum of introspection.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Programming-An-Evoluti...

Cannot really agree with your first point, as I came to Objective-C through Brad Cox's excellent book[1]. Apple has added quite a lot to the language and Cocoa is pretty nice.

F-Script is a nice language in the Smalltalk tradition built on the Objective-C runtime. If I was going to pursue something like this, I would probably work at making a clang-like front end for it.

1) Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Programming-An-Evoluti...

Brad Cox is the original creator and has two very interesting books.

Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach - this one covers an early version of Obj-C http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Programming-An-Evoluti...

Superdistribution: Objects as Property on the Electronic Frontier - economics of software components - http://www.amazon.com/Superdistribution-Objects-Property-Ele...