Re: Which language to get started with cocoa development?
Re: Which language to get started with cocoa development?
- Subject: Re: Which language to get started with cocoa development?
- From: Bill Bumgarner <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:20:57 -0800
On Dec 31, 2008, at 12:22 AM, Achim Domma wrote:
I develop software for a living and want to get started with cocoa
development just for fun. I'm good at python, C, C++ and C# and have
some Ruby knowledge. Now I'm asking myself, which language I should
use to get started with cocoa development:
- ObjC looks interesing, but would be a new language to learn. I
like to learn new languages, but I also prefer to do one step after
another. So learning Cocoa and Obj-C toghether could be frustrating.
- I like dynamic scripting languages like python and ruby, but I
would like to ship my apps to other users. And they should not care
about the language I have used. Can pyObjC or RubyCoca be bundled
with my app, so that the enduser will not recognize that python/ruby
is shipped with my app?
- As far as I understand, GUIs are usually build with the interface
builder of XCode. That tools is tuned to be used with ObjC. How good
is the integration with scripting languages?
- How up to date are bindings to "non ObjC" languages usually? If I
will like cocoa development, I want to have a look at core data and
core animations. Are these also available for ruby and python?
- What about Mono/Cocoa#? Looks like Mono is not an good option, if
I want to distribute my app as small download via the web. Or am I
wrong?
I would be very happy to hear some opinions of experienced cocoa
developers about these topics. Any feedback would be very appreciated.
Language is a very small part of what you need to learn. The much
larger piece is the APIs and design patterns used across the
frameworks used by Mac OS X.
They are implemented almost exclusively in Objective-C, with some C or
C++ APIs here and there.
Thus, learn Objective-C first. Know it. Understand it. And, most
importantly, grok the APIs that you will be using.
Then, if there is some compelling reason to use some other language to
developer your Cocoa applications, go for it...
But until you know Objective-C well enough to fluidly interact with
the system APIs, trying to futz with said APIs from some other
language just adds significant -- and easily avoided -- overhead to
the learning process.
b.bum
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