Re: [Rubycocoa-talk] Objective-C Ubiquity?

[Dave H. <gr...@gr...>]

On Jun 6, 2005, at 8:22 AM, Kevin Bullock wrote:

> If Objective-C syntax seems obtuse, it's only because it bridges the 
> world of good, dynamic, object-oriented programming languages with C,

>  Objective-C is much nicer than programming in pure C, though,

Yup. I knew this. Shortly after graduation from college (with a degree 
in Music Composition, btw), I  got a C compiler in order to learn C. My 
languages at that point included BASIC, Pascal, REXX, and Modula-2. I 
was absolutely appalled by C, and ran screaming after a month or two.

[recommended resources for C and Obj-C]

> After you've got a decent grasp on that, starting from the beginning 
> of MacDevCenter's Cocoa Programming series is a very good way to get 
> introduced to the things Cocoa can do and the architecture for doing 
> so.

The problem is, realistically, as a "programming non-programmer," I 
don't have enough time to learn it from the ground up. More on this 
below....

> More generally, though, don't get discouraged if you don't immediately 
> "get" Cocoa. While it's very well-architected, it's still a large, 
> powerful, and therefore complex software system. I've been poking at 
> it since 10.1.x and I still haven't learned all its capabilities, 
> especially since they add more with each minor revision.

Not discouraged. Cocoa is clearly a freakin' Pandora's Box of instant 
gratification wrapped in a fog of inadequate documentation. When I say 
"inadequate," I can refer only to what's actually sitting in front of 
me. What I clearly need is the right kind of Cocoa book. Well, I need 
the same kind of Ruby book too, but I already know it doesn't exist.

Any/every language or system needs a good reference. For Cocoa and 
AppleScript Studio, Apple's documentation is really superb. Alas, the 
RDoc/gem/whatnot online system for Ruby has proven quite exasperating, 
but the Practical Programmer's guide's latter half is a very good 
reference for Ruby.

For a language, the next thing would be a tutorial. Alas, the PPRuby 
book is a very poor tutorial. I think this is mostly because Ruby's 
very weird (as in, very non-procedural), and the tutorial section is 
waaay too short to have a chance of really getting there. The fact they 
think I'm a convert from Java doesn't help any either. :) Getting into 
Ruby itself has been a real slog because of the lack of a good 
tutorial, but I'm finally getting to the point of having some paradigm 
models in my head so I can go "if I wanted to do X, where would I look 
for that ability?" and thus find the answer in the reference section.

What I now need for Cocoa (and Ruby, and RubyCocoa) is a cookbook. 
"Here are fifty different kinds of 
programs/processes/functions/activities you might want to do/have/make. 
Here's a quick example of that, and a mention of one or two alternative 
approaches." So if I'm making a To Do list manager, I find the "address 
book" or "mail merger" or "recipe book" and go "ahh, there's an example 
of organizing Ruby objects as a tree," or "oh, an NSOutlineWhatever, 
that sounds perfect."

The reference works document sharedApplication or Array.push, but a 
cookbook tells me what it's there *for*.

A cookbook is more than just examples. It's (hopefully) *good* 
examples, and well chosen. "We're doing it this way because...." "You 
could choose one of these, based on..." The /Developer/Examples folder 
isn't a cookbook because most of what's in there just illustrates how 
to use individual parts. "Here's talking to Bluetooth." "Here's a table 
with a datasource."

Thank you all for for your collective polite and informative responses 
to my pathetic whining posts. I have a much better idea of what I need 
in order to keep moving forward, as well as a much better understanding 
of what RubyCocoa needs (and doesn't need). RubyCocoa needs a lot less 
documentation that I thought a week ago. All it's really missing is a 
good tutorial written for somebody coming from Ruby toward Cocoa. Most 
of the current documentation (all the examples that come with 
RubyCocoa, for instance) assume a pre-existing Cocoa background.

I may have to write that, in my copious free time. <grin>