I don't use eclipse for Java development, not being a Java developer, just for a few "scripting" languages, which it's ok for, but I can't for the life of me figure out why you have to install a plugin to enable line wrapping.
I haven't seen XCode 4 yet but will take your account in mind when trying to adjust to it.
Frankly I've never seen anything as ugly as ugly as the combo of XCode and interface builder. I've never gotten the hang of it and have found that building an interface in code is often easier. The platform is just completely unlike just about every IDE out there and for the life of me I don't know why it is so complex.
Of course it might not be complex but rather I haven't oriented my mind to it. It's possible but I blame that on the lack of any good tutorials that explain what is going on. It is almost like Apple doesn't want you to know how the damn thing works. It is just a disgusting piece of software.
It sounds to me that you want too badly for it to be like other IDEs. You need to stop this if you want to be able to use it effectively. Interface Builder is different because it's not a GUI Code generator like in other IDEs. It generates archived objects that are supported by the Obj-C runtime, and links them to IBOutlets in your code when the nib files are loaded by the runtime. I really don't know what you mean by "Apple doesn't want you to know how the damn thing works." It takes time to get the hang of it, but there's nothing that's actually mysterious about it - and it is explained in the documentation.
Still, they managed to also come up with at least one brand-new idea. The code and GUI side-by-side view is something I haven't seen, but is a fantastic idea.
Every other IDE has had that ability for about 15 years, it just isn't the default view.
They are doing something slightly different in Xcode 4, it looks like a traditional split pane view, but doesn't behave like one. Anyway, watch the videos.
The difference is probably because there is no "generated code" for the UI objects as opposed to stuff like the various SWT/Swing editors in Eclipse. There is no
Code:
JButton button= new JButton("name")
construct. I have to admit that this is cleaner, but still not something groundbreaking in the IDE world.
I believe Xcode was one of the first, if not the first, IDE created. So you could say just as well that Microsoft and others didn't follow Apple's already established conventions.
Interface Builder is undeniably confusing. However, Apple has to tread carefully to avoid upsetting the huge mass of loyal Apple developers who already know the environment.
So far, I still find it less confusing to generate my interface by hand, probably because IB didn't even work when I did my first iPhone app.
Maybe it's just me, but I find the notion of a language that depends on indentation as syntax deeply disturbing.
It's pretty disturbing. Give me the beloved { } and ; any day, let me indent however I want to.
Anyways I'm sadly so procedural with my tinkerings in PHP and, don't laugh, kinda-object-oriented-ActionScript.
Should have paid more attention in my SmallTalk classes at university! Then maybe this newfangled object-oriented model-view-controller stuff will make more sense to me. Actually, it's not that new, I suppose, object-oriented languages have been around for a long time.
Speaking of university, on some of my assignments I got marked down for having too many comments in the code. Anyone had this problem? Also, why did they teach us Ada? Who uses that nowadays?
It's pretty disturbing. Give me the beloved { } and ; any day, let me indent however I want to.
Anyways I'm sadly so procedural with my tinkerings in PHP and, don't laugh, kinda-object-oriented-ActionScript.
Should have paid more attention in my SmallTalk classes at university! Then maybe this newfangled object-oriented model-view-controller stuff will make more sense to me. Actually, it's not that new, I suppose, object-oriented languages have been around for a long time.
Speaking of university, on some of my assignments I got marked down for having too many comments in the code. Anyone had this problem? Also, why did they teach us Ada? Who uses that nowadays?
.....................................
In Soviet Russia, Code writes You.
How can a professor mark down a grade for providing too many comments? Though in practice, one has to balance the value of adding more comments with the time it takes away from adding additional functionality to the code, IMO there are rarely enough comments in source code. I think that any professor who marks down for too many comments is sending the wrong message to their students.
Regarding ADA, to the best of my knowledge ADA is still heavily used in the government sector in the USA, but I know of no other companies using it. Though it may not be heavily used, I have always found value in learning new programming languages since they can teach you to think differently about how to solve problems, which can greatly influence your productivity and the quality of what code you write.
I believe Xcode was one of the first, if not the first, IDE created. So you could say just as well that Microsoft and others didn't follow Apple's already established conventions.
Interface Builder is undeniably confusing. However, Apple has to tread carefully to avoid upsetting the huge mass of loyal Apple developers who already know the environment.
So far, I still find it less confusing to generate my interface by hand, probably because IB didn't even work when I did my first iPhone app.
D
No. Xcode is a modern replacement to ProjectBuilder.app which is nothing like what Xcode became.
It's pretty disturbing. Give me the beloved { } and ; any day, let me indent however I want to.
Anyways I'm sadly so procedural with my tinkerings in PHP and, don't laugh, kinda-object-oriented-ActionScript.
Should have paid more attention in my SmallTalk classes at university! Then maybe this newfangled object-oriented model-view-controller stuff will make more sense to me. Actually, it's not that new, I suppose, object-oriented languages have been around for a long time.
Speaking of university, on some of my assignments I got marked down for having too many comments in the code. Anyone had this problem? Also, why did they teach us Ada? Who uses that nowadays?
.....................................
In Soviet Russia, Code writes You.
OOA/OOD MVC Design Pattern from NeXT dates back to 1986.
Good Article, AI. Pitched just right for the general user. To the guy who said " yeah, it's called "blame", that is technical knowledge you posses which most readers wouldn't so the writer quite legitimately described the process. To the guy who suggested this article was "cribbed" from Apple's developer videos - it was written for the general user based on those videos which is not the same thing; so good job once again.
And no I dont work for AI, or have anything to do with them, I just know how hard it is to get general technical geeky stuff across to the normal user.
On the general subject - I much prefer Visual Studio to xCode 3. It is way ahead, and I mostly use xCode day by day ( not always) - in fact I started as a Mac dev out of college. So my use of this IDE goes back to it's Project Builder days...
Anything that gets me out of multi-window hell is good, although I fear I need a wider screen for 4.
Actually, I think the reason that most apps are not "amazing" on any platform (and I don't think iOS is any different here, except perhaps that there are more developers total than some platforms) is that there really aren't that many developers who are amazing. In any field, there aren't that many people who are amazing, and there are almost always fewer than think they are. There really is that little imagination in the world, combined with the skill and knowledge to turn it into something amazing.
Ideas and Vision aren't taught in Computer Science curriculum, anymore than the idea for solving various mechanical engineering problems. The solutions for new applications come from and is limited by the imagination and experience of the engineer(s).
There really is that little imagination in the world, combined with the skill and knowledge to turn it into something amazing.
Yes... kids often have the imagination but not the skill, and adults often have the skill but not the vision. Perhaps to become skilful, you must repeat the same patterns of action over and over to perfect them, and in doing so your neural connections get locked-in and unable to go off on flights of fancy any more.
How can a professor mark down a grade for providing too many comments? Though in practice, one has to balance the value of adding more comments with the time it takes away from adding additional functionality to the code, IMO there are rarely enough comments in source code. I think that any professor who marks down for too many comments is sending the wrong message to their students.
Yeah, this was about 10+ years ago. I think code was always better documented back then. I think in hindsight she may not have marked me down a grade, maybe she was trying to make a point about, as you mention, balancing functionality and readability with coding efficiency. I'm no pro coder, but I do appreciate the creative nature of coding, perhaps I was a bit flamboyant with my commenting, if such a thing is possible. Today, definitely there's way, way too little documentation of projects. Most of us have experienced having to take over projects and having real trouble figuring things out because of lack of commenting and documentation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dyarborough
Regarding ADA, to the best of my knowledge ADA is still heavily used in the government sector in the USA, but I know of no other companies using it. Though it may not be heavily used, I have always found value in learning new programming languages since they can teach you to think differently about how to solve problems, which can greatly influence your productivity and the quality of what code you write.
Well, the main thing I remember from ADA95 was our assignment to write a recursive function. Like, a function that calls itself somewhere in that function. That kinda blew my mind at the time. I was like, "Whoaaaa". A few years later I tried it in ASP (before .NET really came about) for listing the contents of a directory. Because you got to recursively go through directories you find in the directory, and so on.
In the end after university I drifted strongly towards visual design and Flash-oriented stuff with only a dash of ASP/SQLServer and PHP/MySQL. But I think you do have a point, the different languages we were exposed to made us think about problem solving, creativity and the concepts of computer science.
I am quite curious about iOS development but the problem is in Malaysia, where I am right now, there's Macs and iPhone 3GS's but iPads and iPhone4 will be very difficult to obtain even when officially launched a few months from now, due to heavy, heavy demand. I'm wondering whether to devote attention and time to this area. Feels like I'm behind the 8-ball / behind the curve on this one.
Yes... kids often have the imagination but not the skill, and adults often have the skill but not the vision. Perhaps to become skilful, you must repeat the same patterns of action over and over to perfect them, and in doing so your neural connections get locked-in and unable to go off on flights of fancy any more.
A designer/artist friend I knew said, "I wish I could learn all the techniques to be really good at drawing, and then forget it all..."
Comments
I abhor Eclipse. Its horrendous.
I don't use eclipse for Java development, not being a Java developer, just for a few "scripting" languages, which it's ok for, but I can't for the life of me figure out why you have to install a plugin to enable line wrapping.
Will there finally be support for python scripts and debugging in xcode?
Would this qualify?
"SWIG-generated script bridging allows Python to access and control the public API of the debugger library."
See http://lldb.llvm.org/features.html
Maybe it's just me, but I find the notion of a language that depends on indentation as syntax deeply disturbing.
I hated that about FORTRAN, but I don't know enough to evaluate what you say.
Why do you find that disturbing?
I haven't seen XCode 4 yet but will take your account in mind when trying to adjust to it.
Frankly I've never seen anything as ugly as ugly as the combo of XCode and interface builder. I've never gotten the hang of it and have found that building an interface in code is often easier. The platform is just completely unlike just about every IDE out there and for the life of me I don't know why it is so complex.
Of course it might not be complex but rather I haven't oriented my mind to it. It's possible but I blame that on the lack of any good tutorials that explain what is going on. It is almost like Apple doesn't want you to know how the damn thing works. It is just a disgusting piece of software.
It sounds to me that you want too badly for it to be like other IDEs. You need to stop this if you want to be able to use it effectively. Interface Builder is different because it's not a GUI Code generator like in other IDEs. It generates archived objects that are supported by the Obj-C runtime, and links them to IBOutlets in your code when the nib files are loaded by the runtime. I really don't know what you mean by "Apple doesn't want you to know how the damn thing works." It takes time to get the hang of it, but there's nothing that's actually mysterious about it - and it is explained in the documentation.
Still, they managed to also come up with at least one brand-new idea. The code and GUI side-by-side view is something I haven't seen, but is a fantastic idea.
Every other IDE has had that ability for about 15 years, it just isn't the default view.
They are doing something slightly different in Xcode 4, it looks like a traditional split pane view, but doesn't behave like one. Anyway, watch the videos.
The difference is probably because there is no "generated code" for the UI objects as opposed to stuff like the various SWT/Swing editors in Eclipse. There is no
JButton button= new JButton("name")
construct. I have to admit that this is cleaner, but still not something groundbreaking in the IDE world.
Interface Builder is undeniably confusing. However, Apple has to tread carefully to avoid upsetting the huge mass of loyal Apple developers who already know the environment.
So far, I still find it less confusing to generate my interface by hand, probably because IB didn't even work when I did my first iPhone app.
D
Maybe it's just me, but I find the notion of a language that depends on indentation as syntax deeply disturbing.
It's pretty disturbing. Give me the beloved { } and ; any day, let me indent however I want to.
Anyways I'm sadly so procedural with my tinkerings in PHP and, don't laugh, kinda-object-oriented-ActionScript.
Should have paid more attention in my SmallTalk classes at university! Then maybe this newfangled object-oriented model-view-controller stuff will make more sense to me. Actually, it's not that new, I suppose, object-oriented languages have been around for a long time.
Speaking of university, on some of my assignments I got marked down for having too many comments in the code. Anyone had this problem? Also, why did they teach us Ada? Who uses that nowadays?
.....................................
In Soviet Russia, Code writes You.
It's pretty disturbing. Give me the beloved { } and ; any day, let me indent however I want to.
Anyways I'm sadly so procedural with my tinkerings in PHP and, don't laugh, kinda-object-oriented-ActionScript.
Should have paid more attention in my SmallTalk classes at university! Then maybe this newfangled object-oriented model-view-controller stuff will make more sense to me. Actually, it's not that new, I suppose, object-oriented languages have been around for a long time.
Speaking of university, on some of my assignments I got marked down for having too many comments in the code. Anyone had this problem? Also, why did they teach us Ada? Who uses that nowadays?
.....................................
In Soviet Russia, Code writes You.
How can a professor mark down a grade for providing too many comments? Though in practice, one has to balance the value of adding more comments with the time it takes away from adding additional functionality to the code, IMO there are rarely enough comments in source code. I think that any professor who marks down for too many comments is sending the wrong message to their students.
Regarding ADA, to the best of my knowledge ADA is still heavily used in the government sector in the USA, but I know of no other companies using it. Though it may not be heavily used, I have always found value in learning new programming languages since they can teach you to think differently about how to solve problems, which can greatly influence your productivity and the quality of what code you write.
I believe Xcode was one of the first, if not the first, IDE created. So you could say just as well that Microsoft and others didn't follow Apple's already established conventions.
Interface Builder is undeniably confusing. However, Apple has to tread carefully to avoid upsetting the huge mass of loyal Apple developers who already know the environment.
So far, I still find it less confusing to generate my interface by hand, probably because IB didn't even work when I did my first iPhone app.
D
No. Xcode is a modern replacement to ProjectBuilder.app which is nothing like what Xcode became.
It's pretty disturbing. Give me the beloved { } and ; any day, let me indent however I want to.
Anyways I'm sadly so procedural with my tinkerings in PHP and, don't laugh, kinda-object-oriented-ActionScript.
Should have paid more attention in my SmallTalk classes at university! Then maybe this newfangled object-oriented model-view-controller stuff will make more sense to me. Actually, it's not that new, I suppose, object-oriented languages have been around for a long time.
Speaking of university, on some of my assignments I got marked down for having too many comments in the code. Anyone had this problem? Also, why did they teach us Ada? Who uses that nowadays?
.....................................
In Soviet Russia, Code writes You.
OOA/OOD MVC Design Pattern from NeXT dates back to 1986.
And no I dont work for AI, or have anything to do with them, I just know how hard it is to get general technical geeky stuff across to the normal user.
On the general subject - I much prefer Visual Studio to xCode 3. It is way ahead, and I mostly use xCode day by day ( not always) - in fact I started as a Mac dev out of college. So my use of this IDE goes back to it's Project Builder days...
Anything that gets me out of multi-window hell is good, although I fear I need a wider screen for 4.
Looking forward to it.
Actually, I think the reason that most apps are not "amazing" on any platform (and I don't think iOS is any different here, except perhaps that there are more developers total than some platforms) is that there really aren't that many developers who are amazing. In any field, there aren't that many people who are amazing, and there are almost always fewer than think they are. There really is that little imagination in the world, combined with the skill and knowledge to turn it into something amazing.
Ideas and Vision aren't taught in Computer Science curriculum, anymore than the idea for solving various mechanical engineering problems. The solutions for new applications come from and is limited by the imagination and experience of the engineer(s).
There really is that little imagination in the world, combined with the skill and knowledge to turn it into something amazing.
Yes... kids often have the imagination but not the skill, and adults often have the skill but not the vision. Perhaps to become skilful, you must repeat the same patterns of action over and over to perfect them, and in doing so your neural connections get locked-in and unable to go off on flights of fancy any more.
How can a professor mark down a grade for providing too many comments? Though in practice, one has to balance the value of adding more comments with the time it takes away from adding additional functionality to the code, IMO there are rarely enough comments in source code. I think that any professor who marks down for too many comments is sending the wrong message to their students.
Yeah, this was about 10+ years ago. I think code was always better documented back then. I think in hindsight she may not have marked me down a grade, maybe she was trying to make a point about, as you mention, balancing functionality and readability with coding efficiency. I'm no pro coder, but I do appreciate the creative nature of coding, perhaps I was a bit flamboyant with my commenting, if such a thing is possible. Today, definitely there's way, way too little documentation of projects. Most of us have experienced having to take over projects and having real trouble figuring things out because of lack of commenting and documentation.
Regarding ADA, to the best of my knowledge ADA is still heavily used in the government sector in the USA, but I know of no other companies using it. Though it may not be heavily used, I have always found value in learning new programming languages since they can teach you to think differently about how to solve problems, which can greatly influence your productivity and the quality of what code you write.
Well, the main thing I remember from ADA95 was our assignment to write a recursive function. Like, a function that calls itself somewhere in that function. That kinda blew my mind at the time. I was like, "Whoaaaa". A few years later I tried it in ASP (before .NET really came about) for listing the contents of a directory. Because you got to recursively go through directories you find in the directory, and so on.
In the end after university I drifted strongly towards visual design and Flash-oriented stuff with only a dash of ASP/SQLServer and PHP/MySQL. But I think you do have a point, the different languages we were exposed to made us think about problem solving, creativity and the concepts of computer science.
I am quite curious about iOS development but the problem is in Malaysia, where I am right now, there's Macs and iPhone 3GS's but iPads and iPhone4 will be very difficult to obtain even when officially launched a few months from now, due to heavy, heavy demand. I'm wondering whether to devote attention and time to this area. Feels like I'm behind the 8-ball / behind the curve on this one.
Yes... kids often have the imagination but not the skill, and adults often have the skill but not the vision. Perhaps to become skilful, you must repeat the same patterns of action over and over to perfect them, and in doing so your neural connections get locked-in and unable to go off on flights of fancy any more.
A designer/artist friend I knew said, "I wish I could learn all the techniques to be really good at drawing, and then forget it all..."
Where are the videos located?
If you are a iphone developer then you should have gotten an email with the link to the videos.
P.s Xcode 4 looks sweet. I cant wait to get my hands on it.