Re: troubling article
Re: troubling article
- Subject: Re: troubling article
- From: Jim Crafton <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 00:14:49 -0400
I've just been lurking here a bit, but I thought I'd reply as I just
recently got a powerMac and started doing Cocoa development, after ~7
years of Win32 development with ~5 years experience with Borland tools
(Delphi) and ~3-4 years with C++ and Visual Studio.
First off, I think personally he is just a troll. If he is truly a
developer, I would certainly avoid hiring him, as it appears he is
rather slipshod, to say the least, in the way he covers things. Silly
things in the article: right mouse button ??? (man if he is clever
enough to go and buy a For Dummies book, he can spring $40 and buy a
custom mouse with extra buttons).
I think that even compared to big name tools like Visual Studio, and
Delphi (VB is kind of a joke, and the language a mess so I'm not going
to even go there), Project Builder and Interface Builder more than hold
their own.
- The interface is relative simple to work with (I had little problem
learning - and I didn't have to go out and get Cocoa for Dummmies!)
- Working with target is analgous to Visual Studios Project, while a
Project Builder Project is sort of similar to Visual Studios Workspace
- The debugger integration is nice, a bit primitive (it seems, I could
be wrong here) compared to some of the settings that you can use with
Visual Studio, but it's not that big a deal.
- The visual aspect is very nice to work with. Nice to have easy to
read, *coherent* documentation and API design, as opposed to the mish
mash that is MFC (.Net is OK, but the associated baggage with it, IMHO,
is ridiculous).
- Its easy enough to access code and navigate around
That said, I do have some (hopefully constructive) criticisms
- Why do I have to "create" a file as a seperate step after creating a
new subclass in the class window of IB? Is there *ever* a use case
where creating a new class that I would *not* want to create the
associated .h and .m files? Why can't it do this automatically as well
as keep in sync any changes I make, either visually in the designers or
via the code editor? This is a bit weird to get used to. Basically my
beef is that any thing in IB that needs to generate code should do so
automatically, and any methods should just default to some standard name
and be stubbed out. This would simplify matter quite a bit. There is a
kind of disconnect between the Project Builder world and the IB world in
terms of code, and it would be nice to see that bridged a bit more cleanly.
- Hooking up events is a bit different in Cocoa. However this is not
really a complaint, as the nature of Objective C itself, in addition to
the API design of Cocoa (which makes good use of this), is quite
different to the way VB/Delphi/.Net event handling works. These are
largely of the design where an class declares a series of "events" it
can fire and then a developer simply hooks up a call back. I think that
while it is different it *is* more than worth a bit of a learning curve
to wrap your head around the Objective C way of dynamic messages and
delegates.
- More components. Particularly database components, like allowing the
ability to connect to a live data base and hook up a table, or a view of
a table to some gui control, such as a table or edit box or what have
you. Delphi has absolutely superb support for this.
- Some form of "intelli-sense" (for lack of a better term), i.e. the
ability for the editor to drop down a list of potential methods for a
class, arguments to a function/message, etc
- Expanding the IDE - is this possible with Project Builder ? Can
someone else write a different code editor ? A different toolchain (i.e.
could it be setup to use a different compiler/linker)? Adding custom
Project Buidler templates, adding custom code macros or snippets, or any
kind of plugin that can expand some set of the IDE's functionality.
- Perhaps look at streamlining some of the neccesary steps in setting up
an outlet and/or Action.
- Hot keys - I am still struggling with getting used to using the
"apple" key - I have tried to re-assign various hotkeys in PB to use
Ctrl + whatever, but certain combinations do not work. For example, I
can get Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V (copy, paste) to work, but Ctrl + S just seems
to insert some invisible character that then causes compiles to fail
(and doesn't save the file). Not the end of the world but it does take
some getting used to.
Frankly, I still think it is a *great* tool and really really enjoy
working with it. Too bad there isn't a version of Cocoa and IB/PB for
Win32 (no don't mention GNUStep, I am aware of that).
Cheers
Jim
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