Apple's new Xcode 4 could portend new HTML5 development tools - Page 2

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

The place for Developing dynamic web applications was the original Cocoa/Objective-C WebObjects before they ruined it with Java. ...

Originally Posted by esummers

No, I am referring to the port of Cocoa on java that nobody used. I was not referring to Objective-C Cocoa (duh) or Objective-C WebObjects (different platform). I wouldn't be surprised if you never heard of it because it was deprecated in 2005. It was a side project to WebObjects. Carbon is the better example because that had widespread use.

Originally Posted by Socrates

It's important not to confuse Xcode (the development tool) with Objective-C (the language) and Cocoa (the API). Xcode 4 ships with the same versions of Objective-C and Cocoa as Xcode 3.x.

That said, I believe I can answer your questions:

- If you've never coded in Objective-C it's going to seem very weird compared to C#. It's fully object oriented and has the same concepts (methods, classes, single inheritance, interfaces (called protocols in Obj-C)) but the syntax is strange and you need to get to grips with manual memory management, at least if you plan on doing iPhone development.
- No new coding paradigms in Xcode 4, but Objective-C does have paradigms that you don't tend to see in C# e.g. KVO/KVC and blocks.
- Supports Ruby via the Ruby-Cocoa bridge.
- Java Support deprecated. PHP not relevant (can't be used for Mac or iPhone development, which is the purpose of Xcode).
- Xcode 4 is more like visual studio than Xcode 3 so you'll probably like it.
- Xcode included built-in SVN support but it's not all that great. I use Versions, or the command line.

Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by timgriff84

Cross platform does not mean equally bad on all platforms. You can almost guarantee that every large application that Microsoft, Adobe and even Apple make that is available for the Mac and PC has code written in C that is re-used between the two. Any decent developer knows the difference between interface code and business logic. Business logic rules are the same across two platforms and have no need to be re-written but Apple is making app developers essentially write out exactly the same code twice. Interface code does need to be re-written for each platform and is completely seperate, any developer that wanted to create a decent app would also re-write it to make there app popular on both platforms. Saying that "cross platform" means it sucks on all platforms is just a demonstration of not having a clue about development or being quite bad at it. True you can make an app quickly and badly using the same interface code, but you can make your app quickly and badly doing it natively as well. Preventing people from re-using code that isn't going to change functionally just means they have less time to write the code that should change.

Originally Posted by bartfat

The whole reason Objective-C even exists is to allow Apple to control the direction of a programming language. Let me elaborate. If Adobe or Microsoft instead controlled the language specification, then Apple would be at the mercy of those companies to be able to include new features or APIs because those languages wouldn't support them and therefore developers wouldn't be able to write those features or APIs. Now, suppose in this made-up situation, Objective-C 2.0 (as it is in its current form) suddenly appears out of Apple. Now, Apple has the ability to control what the language supports, what APIs it has, can do greater optimization for the platform (i.e. greater performance), and just better integration because there's a focus on doing a single platform well, instead of doing good (usually just okay performance) on a bunch of platforms. While cross-platform makes it technically easier for the programmer, that's not in Apple's interest because being cross-platform means that it doesn't support the latest and greatest from Apple. There's a inherent lag time in cross platform languages coming up to the API and feature parity with native languages (simply because they're third party). But Apple decided it wanted to remove that lag time so people could use its features and APIs when they released it, not 3 months later.

Originally Posted by anonymouse

Yeah, I never really understood why they did that.

Originally Posted by alandail

they did that so they could deploy it on more kinds of servers. THey also did it before Apple bought NeXT and their were Cocoa based XServes to deploy on.

Originally Posted by alandail

you can use xcode to build web sites that run on mac os x server, which can be based on PHP. I use XCode to edit the php for our site - http://www.inktastic.com/ - and would like to have XCode at least be aware of PHP so I can get syntax highlighting, symbol searching, etc, in my PHP code.

Originally Posted by anonymouse

If memory serves, and I think it does, WebObjects wasn't converted to Java till some time after Apple bought NeXT (although, the work may have been done but not released prior to that, but I'm certain that the Initial release of Mac OS X Server included an Objective-C WebObjects, but maybe it was both), but it may have been before the Xserve, and so they could deploy on more server types sounds plausible. Oh well, I guess that didn't work out like they planned.

Originally Posted by alandail

they did that so they could deploy it on more kinds of servers. THey also did it before Apple bought NeXT and their were Cocoa based XServes to deploy on.

Originally Posted by alandail

how so? You can use Objective-C++ to mix and match Objective-C and C++ code. Build the business logic in C++ which is cross platform, build the UI code in Objective C along with some bridge classes to make your C++ classes accessible to your UI classes. This is what I do for all of my Mac apps.

Originally Posted by bartfat

The whole reason Objective-C even exists is to allow Apple to control the direction of a programming language. Let me elaborate. If Adobe or Microsoft instead controlled the language specification, then Apple would be at the mercy of those companies to be able to include new features or APIs because those languages wouldn't support them and therefore developers wouldn't be able to write those features or APIs. Now, suppose in this made-up situation, Objective-C 2.0 (as it is in its current form) suddenly appears out of Apple. Now, Apple has the ability to control what the language supports, what APIs it has, can do greater optimization for the platform (i.e. greater performance), and just better integration because there's a focus on doing a single platform well, instead of doing good (usually just okay performance) on a bunch of platforms. While cross-platform makes it technically easier for the programmer, that's not in Apple's interest because being cross-platform means that it doesn't support the latest and greatest from Apple. There's a inherent lag time in cross platform languages coming up to the API and feature parity with native languages (simply because they're third party). But Apple decided it wanted to remove that lag time so people could use its features and APIs when they released it, not 3 months later.

Originally Posted by Cubert

I think this will be the "mystery" extra app in iLife 11. It will be complementary to iWeb.

Originally Posted by timgriff84

You could have written some business logic in C# that is used to power part of a Website, Silverlight app and Windows app. From what I understand there are tools around that will let you compile that down to be used in an iPhone app, but now Apple say you have to use Xcode and therefore that is not allowed. ...

Originally Posted by ascii

I thought Objective-C was great when I first learned it. It added just the right amount of dynamism so that OO could really shine, something that C++ (my first OO language) was missing. However when 2.0 came out it lost a lot of it's distinctiveness/personality.

They probably thought they were adding great technical features to the language, but the "culture" of a platform is just as important (probably more) to achieving great products. So technical improvements that might damage the culture should not be rolled out. Garbage collection said "our culture is no longer efficiency focussed" and dot notation said "our culture wants to be the same as everybody else."

This culture stuff is not just pie in the sky, it is what distinguishes an Apple from a Dell. And culture changes always have their biggest impact where they start, and then fan out. For example Xcode 4 is the worst performing Apple app I have ever seen, but soon it will spread.

And putting a meme out there that you don't want to be different, in an engineering company, is deadly. Engineering is about improving things, which means changing things, which means undermining what is already out there, which means a culture of subversion (e.g. Steve Jobs and his pirate flag). And there's nothing subversive about changing your language syntax to be the same as everybody else.

The Xcode team needs to be disbanded before they destroy Apple, and Objective C 2.0 needs to be rolled back.

Originally Posted by Mr Beardsley

There are really good reasons for all the advances put into Obj-C 2.0. If there are language advancements that can reduce bugs, increase performance, and make the language more enjoyable to use, then you'd have to be quite nuts to think those are bad things.

Originally Posted by ascii

You're looking at is purely from a technical perspective. I'm saying: something that is a technical positive can simultaneously be a cultural negative, and it is culture that determines the success of a company more fundamentally than technology.

Originally Posted by ascii

And putting a meme out there that you don't want to be different, in an engineering company, is deadly. Engineering is about improving things, which means changing things, which means undermining what is already out there, which means a culture of subversion (e.g. Steve Jobs and his pirate flag). And there's nothing subversive about changing your language syntax to be the same as everybody else.

Originally Posted by alandail

Apple never dumped Cocoa (unless you are referring specifically to webobjects moving to Java, which I believe predates Apple buying NeXT).