What leads someone to co-create one of the world’s most influential programming languages? It’s a question raised by the life of Brad Cox, who died this month at the age of 76. “Brad grew up on the family’s dairy farm in South Carolina,” stated a memorial page at Legacy.com, “but found himself most interested in science.” So while today Cox is best remembered for creating the Objective-C programming language with his business partner Tom Love, it’s easy to wonder if his interest in object-oriented programming somehow came from a deep familiarity with the complexity of natural structures.