Mailing Lists: Apple Mailing Lists
Image of Mac OS face in stamp
 
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC


On Apr 11, 2008, at 11:02 AM, Michael Ash wrote:

That's just kind of a "bottom line" assessment. I don't want to get into an
argument about how you can write good and bad software in either Carbon or
Cocoa because I'm sure that's true. But what's possible doesn't interest me.
What I get when I use the software I use is all that matters to me and the
majority of the Cocoa software I use leaves me unimpressed. 

Ironically, you could swap "Cocoa" and "Carbon" in your statement and
you would have my precise sentiments on the issue. I suspect that both
of us are looking at it with more emotion than reason.

Note that I don't want to bash Carbon. After all, I'm on this list,
and I'm not here to make fun of people. But from where I stand,
building an entire app in Carbon requires so much extra work to get
everything right that it just isn't done, even by very dedicated
people who really want to. Maybe I'm just using the wrong apps, but
this is how it looks to me.

Ah, but in theory Cocoa should allow developers to produce better applications. It handles more things for them and saves them so much time they should be able to produce better stuff. At least the Carbon developers have the excuse of having to do a lot more work to get things right.

In fact, they can do better than that. They've spent time transitioning to composited windows, working with little documentation, working around countless bugs in the Carbon side of IB, bugs in Mac OS X, and dealing with other issues that didn't affect the Cocoa folks, or affected them to a lesser extent. There are aspects of my application that are not as good as I wanted them to be because I didn't have the time to do everything I wanted to do. But I can assure you, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that a significant amount of time that *should* have gone into making my application what I wanted it to be went into working around bugs in Mac OS X and IB. Carbon would have been a lot better, and Carbon developers could have produced much better software with it had Apple not shorted the resources they invested in it and really made it a "first class citizen" as Steve "Big Liar" Jobs promised. Instead we barely got what we needed. Engineers started adding documentation to headers because tech pubs was too understaffed to give us documentation.

Yet with all its advantages, Cocoa doesn't result in better applications. So the only thing it seems Cocoa would do for me is save me some work, after I invested months working to port my application over to Cocoa, of course. Problem is, I already have a framework that handles most all the routine stuff for me, just as Cocoa does, so Cocoa is unlikely to save me enoough time to compensate for the months it would take me to port my application.

Larry
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Carbon-dev mailing list      (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/carbon-dev/email@hidden

This email sent to email@hidden
References: 
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: "parag vibhute" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: Tim McGaughy <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: Jack Small <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: Tim McGaughy <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: Jonas Maebe <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: Laurence Harris <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: Stefan Werner <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: Philip Aker <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: Laurence Harris <email@hidden>)
 >Re: No session about Carbon in WWDC (From: "Michael Ash" <email@hidden>)



Visit the Apple Store online or at retail locations.
1-800-MY-APPLE

Contact Apple | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.