Re: Are Bindings Redundant?
Re: Are Bindings Redundant?
- Subject: Re: Are Bindings Redundant?
- From: Jim Witte <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 16:59:42 -0500
Can you do anything new with bindings that you couldn't before?
Sure, they save code, but do they make things possible that were
impossible previously
Maybe beating a dead horse, but that's never a fair way to assesss a
computer language or feature on it's own. I could write MacOSX
programs in *assembly* if I wanted. Heck, I could probably write
something resembling MacOSX interface running on a 286 PC in assembly
if I really wanted to (it would probably take 40 years to write, and
then 5 years to launch, but it would be possible). All languages are
Turing complete, so unless you're talking about factoring algorithms
with Shor's algorithm and QM computers, there's NOTHING that you can't
do "some other way"..
That said, OO, dynamic binding, categories, posing, Interface
Builder, etc do make it a lot easier to do things.. Do I like the idea
of being able to replace a line of code like [aField
setValue:someTextVar] with a binding that would update itself
automatically? Sure I do. It's what I expected when I first started
learning about outlets: "what, you mean I have to *manually* tell the
field to update with the value?" It allows me to focus on the model
layer, and let the interface take care of itself once it's wired up.
connections in IB that can be initially confusing to understand and at
times very difficult to debug.
Not to mention, code that is also possibly redundant (sort of - types
and method calls will be different). In my experience, redundant code
is always a bad thing - if I change how a redundant (across two Java
objects say) changes, I have to remember to change BOTH instances in
the code. Something similar would apply to bindings I'm sure.
One of my concerns with bindings is that redundant functionality like
these sort descriptor features of table view will no longer be valued
as important public api.
Do these "other features" have other uses, that can't easily be
replicated with bindings? I find it unlikely that Apple would
deprecate them soon, as apps written that use them would break, and
MacOS (generally) has historically been good with backward
compatibility. Partly because the APIs are well designed, so things
don't become messy. NSSortDescriptor will probably just stay in it's
own class - maybe noone will use it after 10.5 or 10.6, but it can just
stay there..
Jim
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