da9000 wrote:
This is fantastic news! Arigato Nippon!! :-)
Because we'd be more than 20 years ahead, technologically, if it wasn't for this M$ stagnation cesspool we're in.
koaftder wrote:
ported to the mac. Having written software on Windows for 10 years, it has become a comfortable environment. I find that
@koafder:
No offense
None taken. :-)
but by your logic I should still be programming DOS apps, because I was comfortable with them, and considering any other platform inadequate. Thus save myself from any positive self-evolution and personal development.
Not really. You move up when new platforms come around that provide a better environment. Win32, *nix, and OSX are all stable, modern, well maintained operating systems that provide equivalent features. None are really better than the other, they are just different. Why should I move on to only develop for OSX when it's not a significantly better OS for hosting my applications? Especially when none of my customers uses OSX?
It's also completely illogical when people say that their programs aren't available for platform X, therefore the platform is inadequate. Sure, program 1 from platform Y might not be called 1 on platform X, but platform X, 99% of the time, has program 2 which does the same things more or less with program 1. I'm sick and tired of hearing this argument. And worse of all it's coming from people who actually where there when their favorite platform was at an infantile stage and DIDN'T have any software (Amiga anyone?). Yes, software gets created and evolves - it's not innate. Duh. So, of course a crappy platform like Windows which has been TRYING to get a decent media player (anyone remember the pre-Win3.0 days' first attempts at Windows Media Player?) for the last 20 years, will have more software than a newer platform. That doesn't mean that imbalance will stay that way, and it also doesn't mean that the newer platform will have worse applications. In fact, it's so funny, Apple came out of nowhere with iTunes, and look at things now: iTunes is the *de facto* media player! In under 5-6 years. (I'm mostly an MPlayer guy btw)
I never said OSX was an inadequate OS because the apps I need to use to do my job aren't available on that platform. If i need a new machine I can't convince the boss to provide funding for a mac when the tools we use don't run on the mac. Macs are selling well, to consumers, no so much for business environments.
The fact of the matter is that any good programmer can do almost ANYTHING with any platform, however crappy it may be. Witness all the cool GUI environments on ZX Speccys, C64s and Amstrads, or one of the hairiest platforms ever: Windows. People have still managed to do great things on top of it, despite all the limitations (let's not get into 16bit code, hunks, segmented memory models and all the putrid garbage it entailed).
This is true. A good programmer can write just about anything for any platform. A programmer who wants to eat and make a living must be selective.
And to be honest, your opinion seems to be biased as you yourself say you've been doing Windows apps for a long time. Have you tried doing OS X or reading the fantastic set of resources and documentation that is provided freely with it?
I use OSX every day. I have written a few apps for OSX as well (hobby stuff).
Myself, I've gone the opposite way: used to do DOS / Windows / Linux apps (last thing I touched was unVisual Studio 2005 I think it was), and once I discovered Mac OS X (in 2005) + Cocoa/Objective-C/Xcode/InterfaceBuilder/Shark/ObjectAlloc, I was pulling my hair out for not having seen "the light" back in the NeXTSTEP days.
My friend, you along with many "stalwart" developers been living in a cave, as was I for years. The core development technologies in OS X are way way ahead of what "Visual" crap M$ has been pushing down devs throats. Words cannot simply do them justice. Suffice to say they're part of the technological trio that Jobs "stole" from Xerox Parc, no doubt the premier inventors of computer technology in the last half century (if you're interested check out: http://product.half.ebay.com/Dealers-of-Lightning_W0QQprZ850632QQtgZinfo ).
I highly urge you, and any other developers, to check out Xcode 3.0 + latest IB and the plethora of FREE developer tools (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Developer_Tools) that Mac OS X provides, and since we're talking about technologies that are of essence to developers here's a challenge: show me anything as good or even close to Shark/Instruments (used to be called XRay) or ThreadViewer or some of the OpenGL tuning tools (ex: http://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/opengl/opengl_serious.html) on other platforms. (please, no responses if you've not played with any of the tools for 30-40 minutes - it'd render your opinion useless)
I've written software for a lot of different platforms over the years. Each platform has a different way of doing stuff. Some things are easy, others hard, it's all the same. Just different ways of getting the job done. Xcode is nice, it's suited perfectly for writing apps on the mac. Cocoa is neat, objC is cool, it's just yet another way of doing things. It isn't any better than anything else, it's just different. No language or set of libraries will ever compensate for good application design and programming capability. Languages and libraries don't write applications, people do. C# and the .Net framework isn't any better or worse than objC and Cocoa or Java for that matter. It's all just different ways to accomplish the same things.
Cheers, and be AFRAID NOT dear friends, the future can only get better from now on! I know you're under the deepest, darkest spell, and just like Darth Vader & co, Microsoft has an uncanny ability to pacify and sedate your sharpest wit, and make you believe you're in good hands, and that change is bad for you. But change CAN be good and in this case your fellow Amigans are voicing more than ever this sentiment. Choice (AROS, MorphOS, AmigaOS4, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X, etc,etc) and freedom is rising like a Phoenix from the ashes. Allow yourself to be EDUCATED, for education is the key to breaking away from the digital slavery you're bound in. The dark ages seem to be coming to pass.
You need to get out a little more! :lol:
PS1. Sorry for the epic epilogue, but as a hardcore technologist, with much blood spilled after the days of C='s decay, I'm delirious and ecstatic about the bright future I see for all of us.
PS2. Not included are the bad things in the Apple camp, and that's because the discussion wasn't focused on that, but on the Mac OS X as a good development platform. Apple and Mac OS X have plenty of things they've got to fix, no doubt, and having been used them and lived them I can honestly say so, yet they bring many more positive things to the table. And because of that, at the end of the day, in my honest opinion, I'd rather be a slave to Apple any day than to a third rate company with third rate products. This is very much like my stance was with Commodore: boy did Commodore have problems, and even the venerable Amiga was not perfect, both in the hardware and the software, but you know what? Compared to the alternative (IBM PC & DOS), I'd rather be a Commie {bleep} Slave any time of the day!
PS3. I sincerely apologize for the length, but you've got the choice to not read it! :-D
