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Re: Apple should get behind Cocoa Java

On 17/08/2006, at 11:00 AM, Shawn Erickson wrote:

On 8/16/06, Ian Joyner <email@hidden> wrote: 
On 17/08/2006, at 10:33 AM, Shawn Erickson wrote:

> On 8/16/06, Ian Joyner <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>> I agree that suggesting to companies that they retrain their
>> developers in Objective-C is a bit much because it is only used for
>> Cocoa applications
>
> If you are going to do any Cocoa development (or related frameworks)
> learning Objective-C/C++ is trivial compared to learning the Cocoa
> APIs and related programming patterns/paradigms. Seriously in all the
> groups that I have worked with, who started to do Cocoa development,
> learning Objective-C was the least of the ramp up time involved (often
> the Java folks pick it up the fastest in my experience).

Sure, but try suggesting that to a company, especially since
Objective-C is a single-platform language. I agree learning Cocoa is
huge compared to Objective-C, but my suggestion is that the business
world is looking for a more gentle transition to the OS X world, like
wheel in the box and it just works.


As soon as you bring Cocoa (and related frameworks) in the picture the
most gentle transition is to learn Objective-C since you are already
making the decision to use a platform specific technology. You will
get a higher quality product and likely in a shorter amount of time
since the language works well with Cocoa and gives you direct access
to all of frameworks that Mac OS X has to offer.

Right. 

As a side note... in my current situation Objective-C++ has been a
dream for our cross-platform products since most of the common code is
and will continue to be written in C++ yet we are able to drop a fully
integrated Mac OS X UI on top of that code.

Apple own Objective-C, so as their system language could extend it to provide C++ to port legacy applications (although I would not like to do a pure-Cocoa app using the C++ facilities as the semantics and pitfalls of C++ are hairy enough by themselves). By contrast, you could not make the interface between Java and Objective-C so seamless, they are just completely different technologies, so therein lies the answer. The Java-Cocoa bridge was probably not worth the effort for a very small number of people who would be better off just writing in straight Objective-C. (Is there anything similar for Windows, Java-MFC?) 

If you are a Java house then either stick with Java or if you have a
Java core that you want to wrap with a Mac OS X UI then consider
native compilation of your Java code (never tried it myself...).

Anyway this is quickly getting off topic for this list.

No, no... I think you have hit the nail on the head and given Vince a very important tool in that if they have legacy C++ code, they can interface that with a thin veneer of Objective-C/Cocoa for the best OS X experience. Thus while it might look like Apple is cutting themselves off from the rest of the world, they are not, rather they are concentrating on tools that will best achieve that integration (although from a purist point of view the idea of Objective-C++ fills me with dread, it's important for this practical point of view and is obviously very useful). Java will keep bubbling along, just not with Cocoa. Well, that to the best of my ability is trying to understand Apple's strategies, so it might not be the perfect interpretation.

Ian

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References: 
 >Apple should get behind Cocoa Java (From: Vince Marco <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Apple should get behind Cocoa Java (From: Ian Joyner <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Re: Apple should get behind Cocoa Java (From: "Shawn Erickson" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Apple should get behind Cocoa Java (From: Ian Joyner <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Re: Apple should get behind Cocoa Java (From: "Shawn Erickson" <email@hidden>)



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