Re: cocoa-dev digest, Vol 2 #2941 - 13 msgs
Re: cocoa-dev digest, Vol 2 #2941 - 13 msgs
- Subject: Re: cocoa-dev digest, Vol 2 #2941 - 13 msgs
- From: Gordon Apple <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 23:17:20 -0700
on 9/20/03 5:10 PM, email@hidden at
email@hidden wrote:
>
| "Algol-68 was a monster-sized language that built on the small and
>
| successful Algol-60. It was hard to understand (it had a formal
>
| specification written in denotational semantics), hard to implement,
>
| and hard to use. But it was 'very powerful' or so everyone said. Algol-68
>
| effectively killed Algol-60 by replacing it, before self-destructing in
>
| a wave of impracticality. Some people see parallels between the two Algols
>
| and the two C's."
Oh yes. We see how C and C++ have disappeared and the world has beat a
path to Objective C. Let's face it -- he only reason why we are dealing
with Objective C is that that is what NeXT was using (C++ didn't even exist
when NeXT started) and Apple Computer paid NeXT for them to take over the
company. A new OS was desperately needed, and that is what we got. It was
a solid OS. For that I am thankful.
I do wish commercial language development had not stagnated with C++.
There definitely are aspects of Objective C, mainly related to its dynamic
binding, that I would like to see in C++. The usual arguments against C++
involving V-tables are meaningless because they are not part of the
language. I really don't see why C++ can't do everything Objective C can do
by using generic Ids and a few proc pointers. Heck, maybe that's how they
implemented the current Objective C++ version. I don't know. I'm still a
novice with Objective C and Cocoa. However, I believe that with a handful
of relatively simple classes that deal with pointers and arrays, C++ can be
made as safe as JAVA and as dynamic as needed. Yes, C++ is still more
complex and requires knowledge of subtleties such as
construction/destruction order, but it is vastly more powerful and flexible
than any other language I know.
Pascal was a fairly simple language and did what it was originally
intended to do, which was to teach and promote structured programming. JAVA
was designed as a simplified and safe language primarily to keep people's TV
set-top boxes from crashing. The web didn't exist.
There are GUI constructions for other frameworks, such as AdLib and
IcePick for MacApp. AdLib even had a lot of features where you could link
up operations to send messages to various places. A lot more could have
been done if it had received any continuing support from Apple Computer. By
the time support had stopped, MacApp had a huge number of toolbox
encapsulating classes and safety classes like AutoPtrs, ref counting
pointers -- lots of things that properly (and automatically) cleaned up
after themselves.
I'm seriously considering moving to Cocoa, but only because it is the
only officially supported framework and I want to leverage that support.
For example, although MacApp had some support for WASTE and the infamous
TextEdit, and I also had my own fairly sophisticated C++ text engine, I want
the two-byte characters and other text features, especially the new ones in
Panther, that are or will be supported in Cocoa. I've looked at Qt, but it
looks like Cocoa for now and Windows will just have to wait. BTW, the
rendering engines have to produce virtually identical results because the
same information will be simultaneously displayed on both types of OS. I
keep hoping maybe QuickTime will eventually support Quartz. Otherwise I may
have to stick with QuickDraw to render cross platform.
--
Gordon Apple
Ed4U
Redondo Beach, CA and Little Rock, AR
email@hidden
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