On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Laurence Harris <email@hidden> wrote:
>
> On May 5, 2008, at 11:31 AM, Michael Ash wrote:
>
>> On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 8:13 AM, Laurence Harris <email@hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>> The File Manager code isn't an issue since all of that can carry over to
>>> Cocoa. But the windows are another story. I endured IB to create over 60
>>> Carbon windows and a variety of menus, and it was miserable. Worst,
>>> buggiest
>>> development development tool I ever used. I've discussed the problems I
>>> encountered a few times before. Chris Hanson responded to one of my posts
>>> once with this:
>>>
>>> "You have long been an Interface Builder critic and the primary reason
>>> for
>>> this is because you have not worked with it to build Cocoa applications."
>>>
>>> This is the way these people think: I didn't have a bad experience with
>>> IB
>>> because it was horribly buggy and has multiple design flaws, I had a bad
>>> experience because I wasn't using it to build a Cocoa application. I've
>>> never seen a group of Mac developers so wrapped up in their only little
>>> world.
>>
>> Sometimes people know what they're talking about when they say things
>> like this, though.
>>
>> IB is, or at least was, essentially two different programs with a
>> common starting point. The code for Carbon nibs and for Cocoa nibs was
>> very different. From everything I've heard, not having had the need to
>> use it for Carbon nibs, it was vastly buggier and more painful when
>> working with Carbon nibs. Thus Chris's response is not being "wrapped
>> up", it's simply his honest opinion based on the facts of the matter.
>
> You're missing the point. Suppose I sold you a car -- a sedan with four
> doors. It has front and rear seats. The front seats are fine, but the back
> seat is so poorly designed and has so many problems that sitting in the back
> seat for more than a few minutes is miserable. You come back to me and tell
> me the back seat sucks and that no one wants to sit back there. I respond by
> telling you the reason people are so uncomfortable in the back seat is that
> they aren't sitting in the front seat.
>
> The problems I experienced using IB for Carbon were *not* the result of not
> using IB for Cocoa. They were the result of Apple sticking Carbon developers
> with a very poorly done, buggy tool. I might have been a little more
> understanding if I'd been seeing this in the first release of IB for Carbon,
> but this was the *fourth* major release of IB.
Apple is not some monolithic entity. There are tens of thousands of
people who work at Apple, the vast majority of whom aren't responsible
for the high level decisions which result in your pain.
So you take your car out and you drive it around the city you notice
that it's really uncomfortable and inconvenient. You complain to the
Apple Car Owner's Mailing List that your car sucks. Some employee from
deep in the bowels of Apple Car takes some time to respond to you.
This car, he says, sucks at city driving. If you take it into the
suburbs our on the highway, however, you will have a much better
experience.
A reasonable reaction here would be to say, gee, this car sucks if
they can't even get city driving right. But if I want to have the best
experience with it, I'd better use it where it works best.
Another reaction is to rant about the Apple Car employee and how he's
so wrapped up in his little world of suburb and highway driving.
Maybe there's more context to his message which justifies the
reaction. But the bit you quoted is simply the *truth*. IB *is* much
worse for Carbon, and if you use it for Carbon you *will* get a skewed
view of the overall application. Avoiding it in Cocoa because of
experience with the Carbon side would not be based on facts.
So maybe there's more to it than what you quoted, but from where I sit
this looks very much like a "shoot the messenger" reaction. Chris was
just telling you how it is, and he's not in any position to do
anything to improve the situation. Nothing in your quote was wrong...
I guess it was just "politically incorrect"?
>> Now, IB for Cocoa is also annoyingly buggy in some areas, but I don't
>> think it's anywhere near as bad. Certainly I've never had anywhere
>> near as much reason to complain about IB as I have about Xcode, which
>> of course we've all been stuck with for quite a long time and which
>> offers pretty much the same poor experience no matter what frameworks
>> you use.
>
> Well, yes, I hate Xcode as well, which lessens even further any interest I
> might have in moving to Cocoa.
Out of curiosity what are your long-term plans? Are you going to run
out the clock with Carbon and then switch platforms? (Or switch
platforms as soon as possible?) Are you going to switch to some
cross-platform GUI framework which has good prospects of being ported
to Cocoa before Carbon disappears?
Please note, no criticism implied in any of the above questions, I'm
just wondering how you plan to handle it.
Mike
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