Mac Development

[Christian Graus]

I am learning Objective C when my Mac finally arrives. I am looking forward to it.

Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )

[Johann Gerell]

Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:

NetBeans

I gave it a shot on Windows a month ago or so. While it indeed looked nice and seemed to have some features out of the box that VS only offers with addons, it was completely unusable with a "solution" comprised of many, many projects, which VS with addons handles with a breeze.

-- Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time - Bertrand Russel

[KLMR]

I can't share your enthusiasm. I'm working full-time on a Mac and I do most of my development stuff under Windows in a VM. However, I currently work on a large code base which won't compile under Windows so I'm forced to use Linux/Mac. And I have found XCode to be severely restricted in its capabilities so I've wholly adapted the GVIm/makefile approach. Actually, this works surprisingly well and I believe that with the right skill (which I don't yet possess) this may make fully-fledged IDEs redundant. At the moment, I still struggle to quickly switch between many files … but well.

[Zoltan Balazs]

I remember 4 years ago when I worked with XCode for once in a while it just crashed without any warning. It was pretty frustrating ;)The GUI Builder was the first time when I was exposed to the MVC, that's pretty cool. If you'll become accustomed to Objective-C you'll like it.

Work @ Network integrated solutions | Flickr | A practical use of the MVC pattern

[M Towler]

If you are a professional working on Mac and other platforms then I cannot reccomend the Qt library highly enough. I develop on windows using MSDEV but then the same code just works on mac and linux as well. The number of platform specific tweaks I need to make for the mac are so small that any unix text editor will do. It also writes your makefiles for each platform. Personally I use nedit, but that is just because I can't be bothered to spend the time learning vi, emacs or anything else.

[Guddler]

I definately share your enthusiasm for the whole Mac development scenario. I also shied away from Objective C at first but when taken in bite sized chunks and with perhaps a good book it's easy enough to get to grips with. And I love the look and feel of XCode. It's come a long way in just the 3 years that I've owned Mac's. I agree with others though that if you load up a project with thousands of source files it gets a lot less usefull. I'm really struggling though. There are a couple of main problems that I see. Documentation is one. There is masses of it. Ordinarily that wouldn't be an issue but as a complete new user you tend to suffer a bit from information overload and not really knowing which bit you need to be looking at because you don't know how to do what it is you want to acheive. I guess the same would be said if I was just starting out in the Windows world without assistance. The other problem I find is that it's not easy to just pick it up and put it down in small chunks. I don't get a lot of time to do Mac development as my day job is entirely Windows / C# based so the only time I do get is maybe a couple of hours once a month in the precious little free time I get. I feel if I could immerse myself, perhaps by getting a job in the Mac world then it would all come very quickly but there's another catch 22 coming along there! Ironically, last week I found myself really struggling to acheive something in VS/C# that I really knew I could do very easily with interface builder and the MVC paradigm.

[KLMR]

Thanks for the advice. Luckily, however, I'm working on a library and don't need to bother with user interfaces. The reason my code only works on Unix is that I rely on some third party libraries that are poorly written and (for no good reason) are completely platform-specific. However, I am hopeful that this will change in the foreseeable future.

[M Towler]

It is also worth bearing Qt in mind for non-gui code. It does also work rather nicely as a general OS abstraction layer (files, processes, worker threads, sockets etc.) in a very similar way to those in other languages, for example Python os and sys packages or the Java SE libraries. You could always have a windows version that accessed the unix utilities via web services ;)

[Paul A Howes]

As an alternative, remember that Objective-C integrates with C++ quite well. That opens up the possibility of using STL, BOOST, and other proven, cross-platform libraries.

Paul

[todd deland]

So after reading this thread this morning, I have decided that I am going to "commit" and try to learn Objective-C. I once a long long time ago took some C++ classes, so that should help me right? What is the best source for learning to develop on the mac? What do you think? Any suggestions? Please let me know. I develop in VS2008 right now, and sometimes learning the IDE is half the battle. So any ideas of where to get started would be awesome! Happy Friday

[Nemanja Trifunovic]

Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:

One thing though, I once considered that VS is the best IDE available. Now after being exposed to IDE's such as XCode, Eclipse and NetBeans, I don't think it is true anymore. It is amazing how different IDEs have come close to VS and some are even better than VS.

I don't think there is a single "good" IDE out there. All that I know of are bloated, slow and inflexible. I just use vim nowdays.

Programming Blog utf8-cpp

[Rama Krishna Vavilala]

I tried variety of things. I quickly skimmed through some documents on Apple's web site: Cocoa Development Guide, Objective-C guide and iPhone development guide. Then, I started with Cocoa tutorial on Apple's web site it gave me a good overview on how to use the IDE, basic concepts of windowing and event handling and Objective-C. The thing which I benefited the most form was to read Andrew Hillegrass's book on Cocoa Development for Mac. Unfortunately, this book is outdated (wrt to IDE) but I did not have any problem figuring out the things in new IDE. Also if you can wait a month the new edition of the book is due to arrive. This is one of the best technical books I have read. The book is suited for both beginners and advanced users.

You have, what I would term, a very formal turn of phrase not seen in these isles since the old King passed from this world to the next. martin_hughes on VDK

[todd deland]

Thanks for the tips. I did the tutorial of the Currency Converter on Apple's site a little while ago, I'll keep my eye out for the book. Thanks again.

[jwillhite]

Check out http://cocoadevcentral.com/. Tons of good examples. I really try to use a plug-in architecture when writing projects in C# using Visual Studio 2005 and CocoaDev has a great article about that kind of stuff. There's also http://osx.hyperjeff.net/reference/CocoaArticles.php - it looks like it has some good articles there. And you can also google any cocoa question, there's usually a blog with the answer out there somewhere. :)

[NYCChris]

I am a C# developer in my professional life, but I have been a Mac enthusiast for years. I just never built up the steam to learn Cocoa until quite recently. I have the 2nd edition of the Hillegass book, and it is great. I have it in my backpack right now! If you go to amazon you will find that the new 3rd edition will be released in less than a month. You can pre-order it now and save some money too. (I already have mine ordered.) The best thing I can suggest to you is to find someone who also wants to learn Cocoa and pair up. I am a big proponent of Agile techniques and I find that pair programming really helps me to learn new tech. The process of bouncing ideas off one another is truly constructive.

[todd deland]

Thanks so much for all the responses. I am going to see if I can find a copy of the Hillegass book to get started with. I also found a pretty nice podcast (so far) called CocoaCast. I like the videos and he follows that book you've all mentioned.

[SchneiderIS]

I too used to be a VS addicted individual. When I bought my MacBook Pro I found I could still use VS (through Virtual Machine) running it better on the Mac than it ran on the PC based solution. I had experience with Eclipse though and one of the things that I liked with it was the ability to use the scripts of past. In fact that is one of the many real strengths in my opinion. So much so that I have made a concerted effort that future development will not happen in VS when and where ever possible.

[Charles T II]

Interesting thread..I just bought a MacBook Pro last week to start working on a couple IPhone apps. At first, I didn't like the look of Objective-C. I'm actually starting to like it, but, I still feel like several aspects are a step backward. Working with raw pointers and having to manage memory just seems wrong these days :). I guess I've been spoiled too long by managed languages like C# and Java. I am actually writing this post from my MacBook. I also have Vista on here as well. I now only need to switch to Windows to work with Visual Studio and SQL Server. Everything else I need is on the Mac side (even Office)!

[The Cake of Deceit]

Until it gets Microsoft .NET and VS with C# and VB, heck no. C and C++ (even managed) are ultra-ugly. That snippet made want to barf. X|

CLR: Removes tough Java-based stains fast!

[The Cake of Deceit]

I forgot something so hideous. UNIX.

CLR: Removes tough Java-based stains fast!