Re: EOF - was (Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa) )
Re: EOF - was (Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa) )
- Subject: Re: EOF - was (Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa) )
- From: "David W. Halliday" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 12:10:53 -0500
- Organization: TNRCC
Sherm Pendley wrote:
On Tuesday, October 15, 2002, at 10:16 AM, David W. Halliday wrote:
William Moss wrote:
Maybe it was for technical reasons. ...
The fact that they are still doing it in a (slightly) technically
inferior
language (Java) suggests this is not the case.
The fact that they're doing it in Java suggests, to me, that they want
to leverage existing JDBC adapters, instead of trying to convince 3rd
party database vendors to develop a native EOF adapter.
As I pointed out, one can certainly provide a JDBC adapter, since
JDBC is really just a protocol, like ODBC. The only "technical
difficulty" is in Apple having to produce their own JDBC implementation,
rather than simply using (or porting, depending upon where it is
implemented, and what performance characteristics are desired) Sun's
implementation.
There is a technical aspect to it, in that it would be difficult to
make JDBC adapters available to an Objective-C code base. But, there
are also political aspects relating to third party vendors, as well as
financial - it costs real money to maintain the Objective-C version.
It would cost /some/ money to maintain the Objective-C version
(assuming they continue the Java version). However, this would only be
a small portion of the total money required for maintaining the
Objective-C version of Cocoa (which shows no sign of being replaced by
the Java implementation).
Instead of considering the current situation, try to consider Apple's
situation a couple of years ago - they were trying to ship an OS that
was already years late from the public's point of view, after a couple
of previous aborted attempts. Vendors were rebelling against having to
rewrite their Classic apps in Objective-C, while at the same time
fawning over Java in the server app arena. I can't really find fault
in their failure to anticipate the warm reception that ObjC would
receive among Cocoa developers, nor the cold shoulder that Java would
get.
Apple has been doing many things right recently, so it's sometimes
easy to forget that the crystal ball in Cupertino is sometimes a bit
cloudy. I'd like to see EOF for ObjC as much as anyone, but I can
understand what drove Apple to drop it in the first place, even though
looking back with the benefit of hindsight now shows that to be a bad
idea. I simply hope that they're big enough to admit their mistakes
and correct them.
I quite agree that their past motivations for going this route are
easy enough to discern (especially having lived through Apple's
flirtation with the so called "modern" notation for Objective-C: A
misstep that was, thankfully, averted). I also concur with the
sentiment that /hopefully/ Apple will recognize the error of this
choice. (My greatest hope is for a superior EOF/POF, so long as Apple's
misconception that EOF is "purely for Enterprise/Database type code"
doesn't cause them to cripple it's functionality [possibly with the
further motivation of not having it compete with WebObjects].)
(There are technically superior languages I would like Cocoa to
evolve toward,
We already have Objective-C, Java, AppleScript, Perl, Python, and
Ruby. What do you want, mermaids? :-)
Sure! Why not? :-)
Basically, as good as Objective-C is, and as much as it incorporates
many of the great features of SmallTalk, it doesn't even have all the
good features of SmallTalk, or even of TOM, let alone anything "better".
(And yes, the integration of other languages into Cocoa bodes well for
integrating still other good languages. However, there remains the
question of potentially evolving the Frameworks to use the additional
features of "better" languages. [Not an easy issue, to be sure.])
Besides, one should not delude oneself into thinking that /any/
computer language today is the /ultimate/, in the greater scheme of
things. (What language, do you suppose, we will need to program Quantum
computers? :-) )
sherm--
email@hidden
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