Re: Learning Mac programming (Cocoa) more...
Re: Learning Mac programming (Cocoa) more...
- Subject: Re: Learning Mac programming (Cocoa) more...
- From: Kaelin Colclasure <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 20:45:43 -0700
Given your description below, my two cents would be that a lot more of
the problem space you're describing is addressed by WebObjects (in
concert with a database) than is addressed by Cocoa. Perhaps one day
Apple will re-introduce Enterprise Objects to the Cocoa frameworks, but
until then, Cocoa offers relatively little support for the class of
enterprise applications you're describing.
My advice would be to focus on learning how to implement the core
features your clients need in WebObjects first. Then, if and when the
limitations of the Web browser as a thin client become an issue, you'll
be well-primed to explore the Cocoa frameworks within the narrower
context of providing a seamless, functional and ascetically pleasing
GUI atop said functionality. For that more specialized purpose, Cocoa
excels. And perhaps in the interim some of the quirks in WebObjects /
Cocoa integration will have been ironed out in the new developer tools
Apple is preparing to introduce...
-- Kaelin
On Friday, August 1, 2003, at 07:51 PM, David Thorp wrote:
Thanks again to everyone who has replied to all my posts. I'm finding
all this information very helpful.
A couple more things...
It seems learning WebObjects and Cocoa at the same time is unwise, due
to the sheer size of what's to learn.
Some on the WO list advised that WO is huge and I really should start
with Cocoa first if I want to learn both in the long term. So that
raises one final question. Can cocoa do what I really want to do?
What I really want to do is this:
I've been developing large scale, custom, networked, multi-user
filemaker solutions for years. FileMaker is great for that sort of
thing on a small scale, but I do find it very inflexible.
These apps might be a glorified contact manager or a project
management system or something like that. A graphic design house, or
an insurance company or whatever will have me write a system that
manages all their clients, suppliers, projects (project = generic word
for graphic design job or insurance policy for a client, or whatever)
and so on.
The data is on a server somewhere and staff in the company log in to
it, from their own computer elsewhere in the office, then add, delete,
edit records etc. over the network and everyone else sees the changes
as they happen.
FileMaker is great for these sorts of things. But has many
limitations. The kinds of applications I've spent the last few years
developing are generally those that the clients pay 10's or 100's of
thousands of dollars for, and take 1-2 years to develop. They want
big systems with many fancy features, often requiring a lot of hoop
jumping through to achieve in FileMaker. I don't believe any more
that FileMaker is the tool for these tasks.
The question is: Are ObjC and Cocoa suitable tools for this? Can it
be done, and how easy or hard is it?
Also, say I write a system in ObjC and Cocoa (most of my clients are
Mac users), but then they tell me they want it to run on Windows as
well. How hard is it to then port that to Windows?
Or... is all the above really something for Java and WebObjects?.. Or
something else?
I realise that whatever way I go, the learning curve for all of this
is big, but I'm willing to put in the time and effort. But I just
don't want to waste time going in the wrong directions...
Once again, thanks for all the help so far. Any advice on the above
will be most appreciated.
Regards again...
David.
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