Re: Cocoa's Popularity
Re: Cocoa's Popularity
- Subject: Re: Cocoa's Popularity
- From: Andy Lee <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 14:32:31 -0500
At 9:51 AM -0800 3/20/02, Matt Neuburg wrote:
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Just watch versiontracker for a month and you'll have enough statistical
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data to prove anything you want. The number of new Cocoa apps being written
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on a daily basis is simply astounding.
Funny you mention that. Just today on VersionTracker I came across a free Cocoa app that's very close to something I'm working on myself. It's not the first of its genre, but it's the best I've seen so far. I've stumbled onto similar beat-me-to-the-punch apps at least twice this year (more, if you count multiple attempts at the same thing). Maybe my app ideas are simply obvious, so lots of people have the same idea. I prefer to think OS X heightens programmer creativity across the board. ;) I think one contributing factor is that Cocoa gives the individual programmer the power to create very powerful and elegant apps.
Not only are many of the new apps free or cheap (and some even quite good), there seem to be quite a few programmers happy to share their source code (JewelToy comes to mind, but there are plenty of examples). Does anyone know if there is a similar culture among Windows shareware and freeware programmers? I wouldn't be surprised; I'd just be interested in hearing about how it compares.
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I've been watching this sort of
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thing since 1990 and the old info-mac days, and I have *never* seen this
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degree of glut of new apps for Mac.
It's nice to hear this from someone who can make a first-hand comparison.
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On Sun, 17 Mar 2002 09:53:02 -0800, Shawn Erickson
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<email@hidden> said:
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>Well Cocoa is part of every copy of Mac OS X
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And the developer tools and docs are FREE. Again, this is a total first in
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the history of Mac, a complete reversal of Apple's previous policies of not
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supplying any tools themselves and charging heftily for developer info. m.
I think this is a huge factor in developer enthusiasm. The tools are free and good, and there is a common shared lore about how to develop Cocoa apps. Also, all the experienced NextStep programmers out there are a gold mine of enthusiasm and knowledge that people outside the Cocoa community may underestimate.
I wonder if discussions like we have on this list are qualitatively different from discussions among Wintel developers. To me, it's downright fun to talk about Cocoa and to read the issues people raise. A petty part of me hopes we have *more* fun that developers on other platforms. ;)
--Andy
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