Mac OS X Programming for Old-Generation Programmers

Contents

Introduction

My programming style is like achieving the goal with minimum programming.  Implementing the functionality is the first priority.  Appearance of the program should be adjusted after the required functionalities are implemented.  Use of advanced programming technique is nothing unless the program works stably.  So, my way of writing code is somewhat conservative.  I guess you can see from the programs available from this YSFLIGHT.COM.

So, my preference was not so compatible with the excessive (to me) visual effects of Mac OS GUI.  In fact, I hate Windows Vista more, by the way.  But, when I was going to teach programming in CMU, three students wanted to use their own Macbook to do the assignments.  In class, I didn't want to waste time talking about platform-dependent functions, like Win 32 API or X-Window functions.  So, I wrote a wrapper function for Windows.  But, to allow those students to do assignments on their Macbook, I needed to write the same set of functions for Mac OS X.  I thought it was a rare chance to justify spending time for learning Mac OS X programming and decided to go for it.

First thing I felt was, "Objective-C?  Does Apple have a bad sense of humor?"  But, I figured that I can call Objective-C function from within C++ source code by using extern "C".  Therefore, I can confine everything that depends on Objective-C in one (or limited) source file, and write most part of the program in C++.  And, now I have a feeling that Mac OS is very well designed.  If only the main language were C++.  (I still use Windows as my primary developing environment though.)

My guess is, may programmers who had been working with Windows or Linux gave up Mac OS X programming as soon as they realized they needed Objective-C.  If so, what I'm trying to learn Mac OS X programming may also help some of them getting into Mac OS X programming.  So, I started this page in YSFLIGHT.COM