Re: Delegates

FROM : ben syverson
DATE : Mon May 19 22:50:31 2008

On May 19, 2008, at 1:54 PM, Michael Vannorsdel wrote:

> I'm just saying Cocoa delegates don't always act in dictionary form.
>
> I know this discussion can go round and round, but I still think 
> reading the english dictionary for delegates won't tell you the 
> whole story on Cocoa delegates.


With all respect, an English dictionary is not a good source for Cocoa 
documentation. ;)

If you're not a native English speaker, a dictionary can clue you in 
to the general meaning of terms that Cocoa uses, but you need to read 
the actual documentation to understand what these terms mean in 
practice. Any debate about the choice of the word "delegate" is 
academic; it's like arguing that the "continue" keyword in C should 
really be named "next" (which I think actually makes more sense; 
"continue" could be read to mean "keep processing this loop."). But 
all these names are just loose informal metaphors for what a hunk of 
silicon is doing to a stream of binary numbers.

BTW, "delegate" makes plenty of sense to me personally. Without 
reading any documentation, I immediately grasped the concept when I 
first saw it in use.

- ben