Women in Technology

Article:		C is for Cocoa
Subject:		C/Obj-C/and blasted OO
Date:		2003-07-23 14:58:00
From:		anonymous2
I agree with your first paragraph very much. Though I have been using C for several years and still hit a wall. I simply loath OO programming. Though ObjC.pdf on the Mac Dev site has helped a bit for learning OO particularly with ObjC. What I'd like to see are: 1.) A well detailed,easy to read listing of the objects/methods in the Cocoa API. NSWhatever get's confusing, especially when several basic components are still not available on the Mac website. 2.) A good, C->Obj-C tutorial. This seems to be what you're doing and I'm grateful. I'm just looking forward to seeing the transition period between the two. 3.) Is it possible to do this all from an editor like emacs? IPBuilder is wonderful, but with the constant, click here-> drag to this element, drag back to this method, etc etc it get's really confusing. Guess I'm just so use to cli programming. Well I'm done, thanks again for the article and keep up the good work.

Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.

• C/Obj-C/and blasted OO
  2003-07-23 15:29:30  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  "Is it possible to do this all from an editor like emacs?"
  
  Sure. Heck, I think this is where emacs came from! Don't do it though. cli programming is fine if you're really into it but I implore you to think about that one for a little bit. I mean, if you want to do it in emacs, why not just program in assembly? I'm kidding ;-)

• C/Obj-C/and blasted OO
  2003-07-24 01:46:29  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  "Is it possible to do this all from an editor like emacs?"
  
  If you mean how to programmically build nib files I know you can. If you look into nib files they are just XML, and you should be able to find info on that somewhere.
  
  Nib = next interface builder
  

• Re: C/Obj-C/and blasted OO
  2003-08-01 15:29:40  halliday [View]
  
  
  You ask for "2.) A good, C->Obj-C tutorial." Does this have something to do with your statement about how you "simply loath OO programming?"
  
  When you say "I simply loath OO programming" I wonder whether the issue may be the difference in the paradigms of Object Oriented vs. procedural programming? OO is a very different way of thinking about programming. Yes, you can, ultimately, accomplish all the same ends with either (C and any OO languages are all Turing equivalent, after all). However, just as with any language comparison, there will be things that will be much easier to accomplish (or, potentially, even grasp, mentally) via one paradigm (world view) vs. another.
  
  Interestingly, I have found that for many people, those that have not had prior C (or other procedural) programming experience before learning about OO have a far easier time. Perhaps it has something to do with the types of people that have tended to learn programming before OO, but I tend to believe it has to do with the difficultly in unlearning old concepts about what programming is.
  
  In any case, I'm glad to see that you have already found the "ObjC.pdf on the Mac Dev site", since, otherwise, this would have been my first recommendation. Another good choice, if you can find a copy, is the old Byte magazine article on SmallTalk (anyone know the date of that article? Sometime in the 80's I believe)*.
  
  * I was actually exposed to SmallTalk, via this article, long before any other exposure to OO. However, just like Steve Jobs' first exposure to Xerox's work failed to impress upon him the true beauty and utility of OO [vs. his being enamored by the GUI], there are beauties of SmallTalk that I only came to recognize much later, after having experienced other OO-like languages. (Can you imagine a programming language that has no native control or looping constructs, other than some textural macro languages, and yet has sufficient power to allow the creation of such constructs by the user [though these are usually included in the standard libraries]?)