Re: Cross-Platform Windows plus Mac

In comp.sys.mac.programmer.help Paul Floyd <root@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> ["Followup-To:" header set to comp.sys.mac.programmer.tools.]
> On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:33:16 -0600, Tom Harrington
>   <tph@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> In article <slrnfhvbf9.5tn.root@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>  Paul Floyd <root@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:26:15 -0400, Gregory Weston <uce@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>>> >
>>> > In a word, yes. In more words: A competent C programmer should be
able 
>>> > to absorb Objective-C in its entirety in hours. Well under a work
day.
>>> 
>>> I find that hard to accept. The ANSI C standard (C99) runs to about
725
>>> pages (Rationale + Standard). Sure, in a day you can learn to use
basic
>>> control statements and i/o. There's a long way to go from that to
>>> writing a major application which uses signal handling, for instance.
>>
>> What does that have to do with an already-competent C programmer
wanting 
>> to learn Objective C?  It's not like they have to learn C all over.
> 
> I would have given an example using a something that can give rise to
> complex interactions in Objective-C, but I don't know enough of it to do
> so. So I used C for the example.

That's a ridiculous thing to do. Not all languages are created equal. C is

the better part of a kilopage just to describe how it's supposed to work. 
Objective-C, when counting only what it adds on top of C, could probably 
be described in about ten pages. Most of Apple's do***ent on the language 
is actually tutorial, idiom, and library.

I'll say it again, even though you don't seem to want to believe it: 
Objective-C is simple, small, and can be learned in extremely rapid 
fa****on. What's difficult is learning the library, Cocoa; that will take 
months. But then learning any GUI library will take months, so that's 
irrelevant. The question is whether having to learn a new language on top 
of that adds significant difficulty. As someone who has learned that new 
language, the answer is no. You seem to think the answer is yes because 
you seem to think that the language's complexity is on par with C or C++, 
and it's just not true.

-- 
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software