Cocoa and other languages, was: .Mac support to C/C++ application
Cocoa and other languages, was: .Mac support to C/C++ application
- Subject: Cocoa and other languages, was: .Mac support to C/C++ application
- From: Scott Ribe <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:30:43 -0600
- Thread-topic: Cocoa and other languages, was: .Mac support to C/C++ application
> The thing is, of the C-based and (comparatively) mainstream
> programming languages Objective C is the *only* one whose design was
> smart enough so that its flexibility fully support all the demands of
> modern libraries like Cocoa.
There's also the performance issue, aside from being the only C-based
language with the runtime flexibility exploited by Cocoa, Objective-C is the
only language I know of that combines that level of late-binding with the
performance needed to develop mainstream applications. Python & Ruby are
great, I really like them both, but Objective-C performance is literally a
world apart from scripting languages, much closer to C or C++ performance.
That's a significant strength, very important to Cocoa.
I'd say the current situation is very nice. The primary language,
Objective-C, is fast enough for development of demanding applications, and
it integrates nicely enough with plain C and C++. Meanwhile, there's a rich
enough C-based API that allows Objective-C objects to be bridged to dynamic
scripting languages, thus for projects where it is appropriate, Cocoa can
readily be used from those languages as well: Python, Ruby, OCaml, and
probably a bunch more that I haven't even noticed.
I haven't gone there yet, but I have thought about using one of the
scripting languages to implement admin functions and using Cocoa bindings to
put the user interfaces on them. So, just curious, has anyone here used any
of these bindings? Java doesn't count; it's not really "higher-level" than
Objective-C (except maybe for auto garbage collection); I'm talking about
the real scripting languages.
--
Scott Ribe
email@hidden
http://www.killerbytes.com/
(303) 722-0567 voice
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