Re: Guidance for Cocoa's steep learning curve

FROM : Joseph Ayers
DATE : Fri May 16 03:33:38 2008

I think what is missing here is some history. I'm working on an APP to
make a series of arbitrary measurements
(i.e. positions, distances angles, shapes) on each of the frames of a
movie. On some movies I might want to make
three position measurements, on others I want to make 4 angle
measurements, etc. Dealing with the movie and
indeed Firewire controlled acquistion and mouse controlled measurement
has been rather cool. What is absolutely
baffling is dealing with NSTableView. The documentation absolutely
sucks. How does one map table rows and columns
on NSMutableArrays and NSMutableDictionaries. How does one map the Rows
and Columns of a "dataSource"
on a NSTable view?  What about records and fields.  Imagine growing up
on Excel and then dealing with NSTableView.
How did this Cocoa NSTableView architecture evolve. Where is the history?

ja

mmalc crawford wrote:
>
> On May 15, 2008, at 3:39 PM, Bruno Sanz Marino wrote:
>

>> The really first step with a language is allways to write code and
>> forget the "GUI" and the "buttons and windows" .....Then when you
>> know what are you doing and you can do what you want to do (like a
>> painter), you can think in the "GUIS" and all these stuff
>>

> I think this is a crucial point.
>
> My guidance for Cocoa's alleged "steep learning curve" is, "Why are
> you making it steep?"
> It reminds me of the clichéd joke: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." 
> "Well, don't do that."
>
> There are plenty of ways to ease yourself it Cocoa development,
> notably just as Bruno suggests here by ignoring the GUI and learning
> about the Objective-C language an the basics of the Foundation
> Frameworks.
>
> Yet week in, week out, we see people who ignore the advice given in
> the documentation and try to learn Objective-C, Foundation, Interface
> Builder, *and* Cocoa bindings and Core Data all in one go.  It's no
> wonder it's daunting.
>
> mmalc
>
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--
Joseph Ayers, Professor
Department of Biology and
Marine Science Center
Northeastern University
East Point, Nahant, MA 01908
Phone (781) 581-7370 x309(office), x335(lab)
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