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Why Desktop Programming Is So Unproductive?

Started by Fred Brunel · 10 months ago

With the coming out of Leopard, I’m truly excited about the new programming features, it gives me lots of ideas about applications I’d like to build.

But each time I dig into the Cocoa Fundamentals, I’m just having a heart attack. Why desktop programmin ... Continue reading »

8 comments

  • David Caplan

    1 year ago

    It really isn't as bad as you think. I agree with you that writing apps should be "easier", but then again Objective C is basically C and C is basically hard :)


    The thing with Cocoa (and especially with Core Data) is that it really isn't that "hard" to make a beautifully looking and fully functional application. I would suggest to you to check out some Core Data tutorials on Apple's site and others... I just started using Obj-c/Cocoa/Core Data a month ago and it took a couple of days for me to prototype my app's interface and have full undo/redo as well as open/save functionality... without having to write more than a few (maybe 20-30) lines of code.


    I agree that some things should be easier in Obj-C, especially for data analysis, parsing, etc... but I think the whole app design framework was made to be able to design the interface easily and have full control over the back-end code.


    I guess if you are only talking about pure command line apps then I can understand your complaints... but then again, just use perl/ruby/python for that stuff.

    reply
  • heri

    1 year ago

    even adobe is thinking about bringing photoshop to the web. when we will be there, there is no point to create desktop software.

    reply
  • Fred Brunel

    1 year ago

    @david Thanks for your comment. Despite my negative feedback, I also think that Cocoa is a great framework given its low-level nature.


    I gave a try to CoreData two years ago and it was not that bad -- the lack of programming abstraction is compensated by the tools.


    The command-line program was just for the matter of example, I would not used Cocoa to do that kind of job.

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  • Fred Brunel

    1 year ago

    @heri complete online software is an holy grail and I'm still a big fan of desktop software -- especially for the Mac -- the experience is totally different from the web.


    Actually, I don't think both compete, an hybrid combination would make a perfect sense, i.e. iTunes Store.

    reply
  • casa

    1 year ago

    Bit Torrent on MacOSX was written in Python using Obj-C binding. I think this was a great app (and still using it on my Intel box, even if it is a PPC binary). It is probably possible to write good software with Ruby too with a bridge.


    I think this is a matter of habits.

    reply
  • casa

    1 year ago

    Have a look at http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html, especially "Scripting Bridge" part.


    MacOSX rules

    reply
  • Fred Brunel

    1 year ago

    Hi Michel,


    Interesting. If Apple truly support these bridges within their tools that's a very good news.


    Actually, the Java bridge failed and they didn't support it anymore. I've been told it was because Java is "less dynamic" than Obj-C and that lead to troubles.


    On the opposite, Python and Ruby are "more dynamic" than Obj-C, so they would be a better fit.


    OS X rules, I agree :)

    reply
  • casa

    1 year ago

    I found an interesting article on Ruby on Leopard at this address

    http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/ruby/wiki/W....
    And here is the adress of the blog of the guy that was responsible for Python and Ruby integration at Apple : http://chopine.be/lrz/diary/.</p>

    To sumarize : bridges are now shipped with the OS.


    Enjoy!

    reply

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