This is in my opinion the best thing about Objective-C; it clearly delineates the object/class and C dichotomy, making it easier for a C programmer (or a Smalltalk programmer!) to pick up. For years, the only changes from vanilla C were the brackets, "#import" and the @ literal syntax (IIRC).
Actually, if you ask me today, after dealing with Scala's idea of how the Option type should work, I might say that nil propagation is the best thing about Objective-C.
