A brilliantly executed rant on verbless programming.1
- Yes, I know it’s old. It’s still good. [↩]
A lot of people never use their initiative because nobody told them to.
— Banksy (via Gus Mueller.)
Bruce over on WarpedVisions writes on entering the world of Objective-C and Cocoa development.
I’m barely past square one, but I found this an interesting title. Of course, what Bruce means is the whole Mac OS X development experience, but it’s interesting that he worded it in the title as learning Objective-C. It’s a simple, concise yet technically inaccurate way to label the knowledge.1
Objective-C just might be the easiest part of Mac OS X development. The hard part is simply knowing what objects are available in Cocoa, where they are, and how to string them together. Basically, the typical framework problem. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still at the very bottom of the learning curve here!
Objective-C itself is very nice; it’s a truly minimal extension to C. I’m amazed at how it’s still a very complete object-oriented language yet so simple and small, with everything done the simple way.
When I first started with Cocoa, I was thinking of compiling notes together so I could write a short book/essay on “Learning Cocoa for C++ developers,” but as I’ve gone I’ve realized the first chapter should be “Forget everything you know about C++. You think need ___ to do ___? You do in C++, but in Objective-C just use the Cocoa class ___.”
- And I’m not intentionally picking on Bruce here. I have said it this way, and probably will again, and he does get it right in the text, as he noted below. [↩]
I’ve seen comments that say iPhone should add Flash support and think surely they’re missing the point. Wouldn’t it be great if Flash wasn’t installed with Mac OS X?
And now Adobe Flash ads hijacking the clipboard.
That said, this isn’t really that much of a security issue, just a major annoyance. It’s not like these Flash ads are submitting the contents of my clipboard to someone. Now that would be a cool and dangerous demo.
I first started developing an application for Palm in 2000 with the Palm IIIc. I was amazed at how well-though the API was. A few things were missing, such as POSIX-compatible routines.1 The API looked a lot like Carbon, which was a perfectly reasonable way to develop applications. CodeWarrior was a decent-enough tool, and growing in capabilities. New hardware, while not announced or even previewed yet, was on the horizon that could take away most of the nastiest problems with Palm OS, which were rooted in the 680×0 architecture.
I estimated at the time they were at least four years ahead of the competition in terms of an operating system.
But since then?
Buying and selling themselves to… themselves.
Absolutely nothing on the OS front.
Since then? Windows CE and successors have caught up in many areas, exceeded Palm in others. Blackberry, and iPhone exist, both of which make Palm look pathetic.
Loss of professional-level development tools.
Hardware quality control problems.
It’s hard to believe that Palm has thrown away this much of a lead. But they have.
- Expecting full POSIX support on a Palm back then was maybe a little unrealistic, but expecting the available routines to match POSIX definitions is quite a bit more reasonable. [↩]
5ives - awesome collection of short and funny lists. Ideal for people like me, who lack the patience for a top ten list. (Also, obviously, the five items have a better averagepunch.)
Ars Technica post on July console numbers. No real surprise: Sony’s PS3 has opened an even bigger lead on the Xbox 360, but the Wii and DS continue to have an entirely different class of sales.
Another oversight by Apple, another third party Quick Look plug-in. This one is for .webarchive files saved by Safari. It isn’t great, but it’s functional.
Two AM Software: Dictionary Cleaner via Macworld.
My word list includes watchable, uninitialized, Frankenstein’s, Nanaimo, Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Galatians and Cthluhu.
If you make a text clipping in Leopard, you’ll be surprised to discover that QuickLook can’t generate a preview for it.
Text clipping without plugin
A surprising omission by Apple, given that Leopard still generates these when you drag text to the desktop. But Google found HetimaClipping.qlgenerator, which fills the void:
With Hetima