Skip to main content

On programming languages and the Mac

Every so often I dig out my Xcode stuff and have a go at exploring developing an idea for Mac OS X. Everytime the same thing happens to me: Objective-C is such an offensive language to my sensibilities that I get diverted into doing something else.

All the lessons that we have learned the hard way over the years -- the importance of strong static typing, the importance of tools for large scale programming -- seem to have fallen on deaf ears in the Objective-C community. How long did it take to get garbage collection into the language? I also feel that some features of Objective-C represent an inherent security risk (in particular categories) that would make me very nervous to develop a serious application in it.

As it happens, I am currently developing a programming language for Complex Event Processing.
Almost every choice that I am making in that language is the opposite to the choice made for Objective-C -- my language is strongly, statically typed; it is designed for parallel execution, it uses a functional programming foundation, it is symbolic in nature, designed to permit development of large programs, etc. etc.

Hence my allergic reaction and yet again I veer off into something that does not involve actually making a beautiful application for a platform that I much admire.

I have to also admit that I regret Apple's choice to abandon Java development. I am not an apologist for Java, but it is significantly better for programming in than Objective-C.

I have heard that some of the features of Cocoa are impossible to do in Java. I have strong doubts about that.

I just wish that Apple's sense of design extended to the underlying technologies as much as it does to user engineering.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Comments Should be Meaningless

This is something of a counterintuitive idea: Comments should be meaningless What, I hear you ask, are you talking about? Comments should communicate to the reader! At least that is the received conventional wisdom handed does over the last few centuries (decades at least). Well, certainly, if you are programming in Assembler, or C, then yes, comments should convey meaning because the programming language cannot So, conversely, as a comment on the programming language itself, anytime the programmer feels the imperative to write a meaningful comment it is because the language is not able to convey the intent of the programmer. I have already noticed that I write far fewer comments in my Java programs than in my C programs.  That is because Java is able to capture more of my meaning and comments would be superfluous. So, if a language were able to capture all of my intentions, I would never need to write a comment. Hence the title of this blog.
Read more

In Praise of Crappy Code

Not all code needs to be perfect! This is pretty heretical thinking for a software engineer. The issue is simple: how do you go about developing software for a small fixed budget. Imagine that you have $500 to implement a solution to a problem. If you spend more than that you will never recoup the extra that you spent. This comes up a lot in systems integration scenarios and also in customization efforts. Someone wants you to 'tweak' an application that they are using; you know that no-one else would want that feature and that if you spend more than what the customer will pay you will end up losing money. From the customer's perspective, the common 'time and materials' approach to quoting for software development is a nightmare. Being able to offer a fixed price contract for a task is a big benefit for the customer. But, how much do you quote for? Too much and you scare the customer away. Too little and you lose money. This is where 'crappy code' com...
Read more

Action at a distance

We are currently writing our first draft of the SOA Reference Architecture. Everyone is very busy doing their bit. My current section is on the Real World Effect of using a service. The RA is really an abstract architecture: we are not focusing on things like SOAP, or any of the other 60+ Web service specifications out there. We are trying to get at the essence of makes SOA special and how it can be made to work. It is a pretty basic aspect of services that we are trying to get something to happen: buy a book, get the weather forecast whatever. In other words: its action at a distance. I am communicating with you in the hope that we can get some mutual benefit. This already distinguishes SOA from the Web, whose basic abstraction is to acquire a representation of a resource will be rendered locally for human consumption. Actions are not inherently about representations, they are about changing the world - one book at a time. Action itself is a very difficult concept to get hold of. It ...
Read more