Re: Cocoa et al as HCI usability problem

FROM : ben syverson
DATE : Mon May 19 23:12:13 2008

On May 19, 2008, at 3:36 PM, Peter Duniho wrote:

> I appreciate the example.  It's certainly reasonably elegant and to 
> the point, and it's more "real world" than some of the other ones 
> (bridging Cocoa to another language?  yeah, right...a) it's not like 
> you can't interface between languages with other languages, and b) 
> this is not the kind of thing one is going to see in general 
> application code).  But not the sort of compelling "we really need 
> the language to be this way otherwise it just doesn't work" example 
> I was hoping for.


You mean the "Cocoa is the only One True Language, and this is why you 
MUST use it" example?

Come on, obviously you can do anything you want to do with any of the 
languages that have been mentioned. I think you may be expecting too 
much from Cocoa & Obj-C. It's just a framework and language. It's one 
that I think offers lots of helpful time-savers, and to me, looks 
prettier and is easier to interpret than others. But that's a personal 
call. If you really hate it, don't use it. I certainly don't use C++ 
or any of its derivatives like Java and C#.

However, if you want to develop for the Mac or iPhone, your best bet 
is to learn Cocoa & Obj-C. I really don't think it's that difficult, 
and I think Apple has made it pretty easy for you. If you're going to 
sink your teeth into a new environment, you should expect a few 
growing pains, such as figuring out clipping paths (which really 
aren't tricky at all once you see how they work -- and Apple does 
provide example code).

When I'm coding, I have at least three apps open -- Xcode, Firefox and 
TextWrangler. If I need to remember the methods available in a class, 
I switch to FF and Google the class within Apple's site. If I still 
need clarification, I switch to TextWrangler and do a multi-file 
search (I like TW's multi-search a little bit better than Xcode's, and 
it helps me keep my search separate from my Xcode windows) for the 
method or class in my /Developer/Examples/ directory. 99% of the time, 
there is an example in Examples that does something close to what I'm 
trying to do, and the search helps me find those exact lines of code.

I often do this sequence even on methods/classes I've used many times 
before, because it reminds me of all the details, and sometimes 
reminds me of an alternate method/class that is actually a better fit.

Anyway, that's my last word on this. I've used this thread as 
procrastination from real work for too long already. :)

- ben