Re: Learning Cocoa (OT!: Small Language Rant)
Re: Learning Cocoa (OT!: Small Language Rant)
- Subject: Re: Learning Cocoa (OT!: Small Language Rant)
- From: Jonathan Stimmel <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:53:05 -0700
- Mail-followup-to: Jonathan Stimmel <email@hidden>, email@hidden
On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 05:48:41PM -0400, Andre John Mas wrote:
>
This is true, also I believe that if you want to use Java please leave
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Cocoa alone and use AWT or Swing instead. Java was designed to be a
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cross platform application environment and linking it with Cocoa,
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which is currently MacOS X only, kinda kills the advantages of Java.
I have to disagree with this statement. Yes, you lose a little bit
of cross-platform support, but otoh, how many Mac OS users do you
expect to type "java -jar MyApp.jar" just so you can use Swing? Sure,
you can package it into an a double-clickable OS X app, but doesn't
that action also drop cross platform support?
Just because you use Java with Cocoa doesn't mean that you can't
separate the functional part of your code from the interface. Quite
frankly, those two functions *should* be separate. I started working
on an app that uses cocoa for user interaction, but the core will
remain "pure" Java, so that I (and other developers) can put
alternate, interfaces on it (perhaps Swing, but also interfaces
that swing isn't equipped for, such as a command-line/text version,
or a web application).
>
Also how many people gripped when Microsoft was adding a Windows only
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API to Java?
I don't think you can compare Microsoft with Apple in this case.
From
http://www.sun.com/announcement/letter.html:
Microsoft delivered a product that did not pass the Java
compatibility tests.
This is very different than providing additional APIs (disclaimer:
I did not follow the trial closely...).
>
My point of view in programming, is that you should use the
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best tool for the task at hand.
Agreed.
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In this case Java for portability and ObjC to really take advantage of
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MacOS X.
I cannot agree with this generalization so long as Apple is committed
to providing the same functionality to both languages. Admittedly, I
haven't done enough Cocoa to see what I may be losing by using Java
instead of Objective C, however the impression I've gotten is that it's
95% there (though it does have the feel of something that was "mapped to"
rather than "designed for" Java).