Re: Mac OS X 10.7 Lion -- developer preview announced
Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 5:13 pm
Thanks for some very useful feedback on Mac developer issues for cross-platform apps etc.
Oh, I looked at Mono earlier, but forget why I dismissed it. I probably have a cached email I can track down. It's always worth another look.
I had heard some people promote WebKit as an app development accelerator that rubs off on multiple targets, but your is the first detailed write-up I have seen that gives me any reason to research it further.
Thanks for clarifying the Qt "ugliness" issue. In the end, our customers are the final judge and jury, but you've given me reason to investigate some other options, and now is a good time, as Lion may well break the current paradigm (we're going to load it on a computer here pretty soon, to see what works and what doesn't).
I am very pro-Java and very anti-AWT/Swing. I worked with SWT/JFace/RCP for awhile, but the project was killed for reasons I can't go into here, and it was more expedient to go back to AWT/Swing and write enough wrappers to make it work better than to drop everything and start from scratch with a Qt port (though that might still happen eventually). Sun did Java a disservice by bundling the catastrophic AWT/Swing toolkit. It's a fatally flawed design, but at least it's better than MFC (and its derivatives) and Visual Basic, which is what I was using before (in order to plug into some other apps at the time).
I am way more of a C/C++ expert than a Java expert, even after all these years, but for app development, feel C/C++ is not the best way to go overall. The Qt toolkit mitigates some of the aspects of C++ that slow down development in smaller organizations. Python is also an option and has many bindings. Ruby is interesting but a bit weird and maybe not ideal for desktop apps that are highly complex.
I'll look into WebKit some, this week, as I am just now (finally) between release cycles and not under quite the pressure I've been under (I was working 16 hour days for six weeks straight). It seems the best alternative option at this point, given the specificity of ObjectiveC to Mac-only development.
It's such a strange position to be in, to admire Apple for doing almost everything better than the competitors, and yet somewhat resenting their go-it-alone strategy because of the impact it has on developers who support all major platforms and can't afford to write things twice.
Sorry I can't give many hints about what I do, due to what could happen with people doing Google searches on terms that show up in my postings and not wanting to make it too easy for them to connect the pieces and potentially get people into trouble. The only hint that I'll drop is that my app was reviewed in Sound-On-Sound a few years back, and was also mentioned by name by Paul McCartney in an interview a year or two ago (boy, did that make my day!).
Oh, I looked at Mono earlier, but forget why I dismissed it. I probably have a cached email I can track down. It's always worth another look.
I had heard some people promote WebKit as an app development accelerator that rubs off on multiple targets, but your is the first detailed write-up I have seen that gives me any reason to research it further.
Thanks for clarifying the Qt "ugliness" issue. In the end, our customers are the final judge and jury, but you've given me reason to investigate some other options, and now is a good time, as Lion may well break the current paradigm (we're going to load it on a computer here pretty soon, to see what works and what doesn't).
I am very pro-Java and very anti-AWT/Swing. I worked with SWT/JFace/RCP for awhile, but the project was killed for reasons I can't go into here, and it was more expedient to go back to AWT/Swing and write enough wrappers to make it work better than to drop everything and start from scratch with a Qt port (though that might still happen eventually). Sun did Java a disservice by bundling the catastrophic AWT/Swing toolkit. It's a fatally flawed design, but at least it's better than MFC (and its derivatives) and Visual Basic, which is what I was using before (in order to plug into some other apps at the time).
I am way more of a C/C++ expert than a Java expert, even after all these years, but for app development, feel C/C++ is not the best way to go overall. The Qt toolkit mitigates some of the aspects of C++ that slow down development in smaller organizations. Python is also an option and has many bindings. Ruby is interesting but a bit weird and maybe not ideal for desktop apps that are highly complex.
I'll look into WebKit some, this week, as I am just now (finally) between release cycles and not under quite the pressure I've been under (I was working 16 hour days for six weeks straight). It seems the best alternative option at this point, given the specificity of ObjectiveC to Mac-only development.
It's such a strange position to be in, to admire Apple for doing almost everything better than the competitors, and yet somewhat resenting their go-it-alone strategy because of the impact it has on developers who support all major platforms and can't afford to write things twice.
Sorry I can't give many hints about what I do, due to what could happen with people doing Google searches on terms that show up in my postings and not wanting to make it too easy for them to connect the pieces and potentially get people into trouble. The only hint that I'll drop is that my app was reviewed in Sound-On-Sound a few years back, and was also mentioned by name by Paul McCartney in an interview a year or two ago (boy, did that make my day!).
