Objective-C is a reflective object oriented programming language developed by Brad Cox as a hybrid between Smalltalk and C to combine the flexibility of Smalltalk with the execution speed of C. It was chosen by NeXT Inc. as the implementation language for the NeXTstep operating system and its API, which was later published as an open specification under the name OpenStep, After Apple Inc. acquired NeXT, Objective-C and the NextStep API became the base for Apple's current operating system Mac OS X. Today, Objective-C is the main application development language for Mac OS X.