Re: EOF (was Re: Cocoa CGI)
Re: EOF (was Re: Cocoa CGI)
- Subject: Re: EOF (was Re: Cocoa CGI)
- From: Deirdre Saoirse Moen <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:40:49 -0700
On Monday, May 21, 2001, at 06:56 , David W. Halliday wrote:
Regardless, Apple has lost a superior tool for native Cocoa development
on the client and standalone sides, as well as squandering a reason for
using Apple hardware on the server side.
Not only that, but Apple has taken away a competetive advantage for
Cocoa software developers: by forcing us to use Java the playing
field has been leveled for those other Java developer shops out
there. (Read http://paulgraham.com/paulgraham/avg.html for the
competitive edge Lisp gave him.) The more so because even if I use
Java for desktop EOF applications, why should I limit myself to a
tiny market whereas my competitors can run their applications on the
Wintel, Linux and Sun machines out there? This can make a big
difference.
Because EOF is cooler than the native Java stuff -- and you can code
it faster. Sorry, even WITH your argument I still think there's a
competitive advantage for Java EOF applications. And everyone knows
I'm not a fan of Java, so that's saying a lot.
Besides, you can deploy a back-end version of your app on WO on
Windows 2000, Solaris, Hockey Pucks, or (they said it, but I didn't
know that until yesterday) Linux. And then it'll run on every client
platform with a compatible web browser (i.e. almost all of them).
However, there would be a greater competitive advantage if they
*also* allowed EOF (and also WO, but I'm more interested in EOF
personally) with Objective-C.
My conclusion would be: dump Cocoa and WO and jump ship to the Java
camp. I could still use my Mac to write Java desktop applications
but I would not deploy them on that platform. Too bad Apple.
Also, with WO, I believe there should be an ObjC version still. Why?
Because of what many of us who have been sysadmins have discovered:
not only is Java not my favorite language to develop in, it's also
not my favorite language to deploy. It likes to runaway with memory
leaks, too many threads and crashing JVMs and servelet engines.
Clearly, not having to handle memory has its real downsides.
And if the people who pressured Apple for Java WO would get those
middle-of-the-night pages themselves, maybe they'd get a clue, "oh,
gee, maybe that wasn't such a great idea."
Of course, I don't want to do this... writing Cocoa applications is
much more fun than Swing...
If I ever have to code in Swing to pay the rent, please do me the
favor of shooting me. I put it up there with crocheting doilies and
tole painting and watching soap operas as things I will only be doing
if I have gone totally bats. (That said, I do write in Java on
occasion, but the GUI stuff is poorly implemented imho)
--
_Deirdre Stash-o-Matic:
http://weirdre.com http://deirdre.net
Macintosh Developer (seeking work): Will work for Cocoa
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