Are macs "idea" for programming

By spartan232323
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spartan232323

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Today, one of my friends said that Mac OSX is natively better at programming that Windows XP.

I was wondering if there's ANY truth to this statement.

EDIT: Sorry, i spelled "ideal" wrong in the title.

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Menge

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form what i've heard, the C++ model for OS X programming is more concise than the Windows one. Cleaner, easier to understand code.

Plus, there are great tools for coding and designing [ui] for OS X.

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spartan232323

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in short == yes

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Could you please expand?

Apple supports its developers. Xcode (Like Visual Studio) is included with Mac OS X and is free.

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I thought that MS supported Windows Developrs too, with things like MSDN and other stuff. How's Xcode compared to VS?

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VGVL

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I thought that MS supported Windows Developrs too, with things like MSDN and other stuff. How's Xcode compared to VS?

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Microsoft definitely supports its developers, but they do not include Visual Studio for free on every installation of Windows XP like Apple does with Xcode and Mac OS X. I find that to be a big plus because it allows any Mac user and Windows programmer who has recently switched to try out application development on the Mac for free.

Xcode.

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username();

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Microsoft definitely supports its developers, but they do not include Visual Studio for free on every installation of Windows XP like Apple does with Xcode and Mac OS X. I find that to be a big plus because it allows any Mac user and Windows programmer who has recently switched to try out application development on the Mac for free.

Xcode.

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VS .net blows away xCode 100%. It is worth the money. The academic copies of VC++ .net are like $50, and VS.net academic is $80.

Plus compare MSDN library to anything Apple has.

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username();

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form what i've heard, the C++ model for OS X programming is more concise than the Windows one. Cleaner, easier to understand code.

Plus, there are great tools for coding and designing [ui] for OS X.

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So yes, Apple?s implementation of Objective C is probably exponentially cleaner looking then Borland?s Windows implementation of COBOL. So you really cant say that one is cleaner then the other.

Microsoft supports 93% of the C++ specification in there C++ compiler, and Microsoft supports hundreds on languages on there platform. Furthermore, Microsoft provides all of its compilers for free, and at least the .net compilers have a great free IDE called SharpDevelop which is open source (although SharpDevelop was not written by Microsoft). Furthermore, when your trying to solve programming issues, you will find its 40x (based simply on the number of PC vs. Mac users) easier to find Windows developers then Mac ones to help. Furthermore, Microsoft?s VS.net GUI designer is pretty damn good while still giving you the flexibility to do it by hand.

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spartan232323

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Hmmm, Xcode doesn't have the "professional" look to it. My friend has a mac; i ask him if i could try it.

Also, couldn't Windows users just install freeware IDEs

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username();

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Hmmm, Xcode doesn't have the "professional" look to it. My friend has a mac; i ask him if i could try it.

Also, couldn't Windows users just install freeware IDEs

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Yes, Sharp Devlop for .net is one, and its open source.

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jamend

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So yes, Apple?s implementation of Objective C is probably exponentially cleaner looking then Borland?s Windows implementation of COBOL. So you really cant say that one is cleaner then the other.

Microsoft supports 93% of the C++ specification in there C++ compiler, and Microsoft supports hundreds on languages on there platform. Furthermore, Microsoft provides all of its compilers for free, and at least the .net compilers have a great free IDE called SharpDevelop which is open source (although SharpDevelop was not written by Microsoft). Furthermore, when your trying to solve programming issues, you will find its 40x (based simply on the number of PC vs. Mac users) easier to find Windows developers then Mac ones to help. Furthermore, Microsoft?s VS.net GUI designer is pretty damn good while still giving you the flexibility to do it by hand.

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There are also free Visual Studio Express releases for VB.NET, C#, etc., and you can get full C++ compatibility by either getting Microsoft's Services for Unix and using GCC natively or using something third-party like cygwin or MinGW32.

Edit: Also, Macs don't even use C++ for development. They have their own spin-off of C called Objective C. RAD (rapid application development, ex. VB, .NET) is also somewhat lacking on the Mac.

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username();

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There are also free Visual Studio Express releases for VB.NET, C#, etc., and you can get full C++ compatibility by either getting Microsoft's Services for Unix and using GCC natively or using something third-party like cygwin or MinGW32.

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Unfortunately, they are only free because they are pre-release versions that are illegal to develop commercially with. When they do come out they will be priced $49.99

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aristotle-dude

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Today, one of my friends said that Mac OSX is natively better at programming that Windows XP.

I was wondering if there's ANY truth to this statement.

EDIT: Sorry, i spelled "ideal" wrong in the title.

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OSX includes the GCC compiler, an Integrated Development Environment (XCode) and a GUI Builder (Interface Builder).

The Application Programmer Interface (API for short) called Cocoa is fully Object Oriented whereas Win32 is and ugly C based interface. You could say that Cocoa is somewhat analogous to .NET 2.0 except that it has been around since late 80's.

Comparison between .NET 2.0 and Cocoa:

- both are late binding

- object oriented

- can write programs with a few lines.

- use frameworks

- XML prefs/config files

- genericity

- dynamic recompile

Could you please expand?

I thought that MS supported Windows Developrs too, with things like MSDN and other stuff. How's Xcode compared to VS?

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MS does provide a free SDK with compilers for .NET (separate download) but a Visual IDE costs money. MSDN subscriptions cost thousands of dollars.

Visual Studio studio.net 2005 (Widbey) is finally going to fix some usability issues that previous versions had.

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username();

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OSX includes the GCC compiler, an Integrated Development Environment  (XCode) and a GUI Builder (Interface Builder).

The Application Programmer Interface (API for short) called Cocoa  is fully Object Oriented whereas Win32 is and ugly C based interface. You could say that Cocoa is somewhat analogous to .NET 2.0 except that it has been around since late  80's.

Comparison between .NET 2.0 and Cocoa:

- both are late binding

- object oriented

- can write programs with a few lines.

- use frameworks

- XML prefs/config files

- genericity

- dynamic recompile

MS does provide a free SDK with compilers for .NET (separate download) but a Visual IDE costs money. MSDN subscriptions cost thousands of dollars.

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I find it completely humorous you would even put Cocoa on the same level of .net. Furthermore, .net is considerably easier to use with VS.net (and Sharp Develops) great IntelliSense. Now explain to me this, how is the Cocoa way easier to understand than the Windows way of simply showing a message box :

Cocoa (mac):

NSRunAlertPanel(@"Message1, Hello1",@"Hello, Cocoa!",

@"OK",NULL,NULL);

C# (.net platform ? Windows)

MessageBox.Show(?Message1, Hello!?, ?hello cocoa?);

VB.net (.net platform ? Windows)

MsgBox(?Message1, Hello!?, ?hello cocoa?)

VB Classic:

MsgBox(?Message1, Hello!?, ?hello cocoa?)

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aristotle-dude

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Hmmm, Xcode doesn't have the "professional" look to it. My friend has a mac; i ask him if i could try it.

Also, couldn't Windows users just install freeware IDEs

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What are you looking for in an IDE? The GUI design is separate in the Interface builder App.

This is not a problem since OS X is a great multitasker. You also are not tied to a particular language one you lay out the GUI.

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username();

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What are you looking for in an IDE? The GUI design is separate in the Interface builder App.

This is not a problem since OS X is a great multitasker. You also are not tied to a particular language one you lay out the GUI.

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That?s great about the multi-tasking. So are Windows, Linux, and Unix. Good to know.

BTW, I believe he?s looking for the professional look that any serious developer wants. See that to me is a huge inconvenience (having two different programs, one for UI, and one for the actual code) that?s avoided using either SharpDevlop or VS.net. But no, Apple can do no wrong! When they do something it is always the right way of doing it.

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aristotle-dude

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I find it completely humorous you would even put Cocoa on the same level of .net. Furthermore, .net is considerably easier to use with VS.net (and Sharp Develops) great IntelliSense. Now explain to me this, how is the Cocoa way easier to understand than the Windows way of simply showing a message box :

Cocoa (mac):

NSRunAlertPanel(@"Message1, Hello1",@"Hello, Cocoa!",

        @"OK",NULL,NULL);

C# (.net platform ? Windows)

MessageBox.Show(?Message1, Hello!?, ?hello cocoa?);

VB.net (.net platform ? Windows)

MsgBox(?Message1, Hello!?, ?hello cocoa?)

VB Classic:

MsgBox(?Message1, Hello!?, ?hello cocoa?)

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I find it completely humorous that you would use such a silly example. As for intellisense, it drives me up the wall.

By your logic, VB.Net is superior to C# because it is less verbose. VB.NET is not something I would recommend as it has way too muc:rolleyes:r from VB.

:rolleyes:

You may not like the syntax of it but that does not change the fact that you can write a web browser with webcore in few lines of code or a number of other useful programs with very little effort using other core frameworks on OS X.

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VGVL

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You may not like the syntax of it but that does not change the fact that you can write a web browser with webcore in few lines of code or a number of other useful programs with very little effort using other core frameworks on OS X.

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Exactly. Yesterday I made my own web browser in Xcode using the WebKit framework with the user interface that I needed for a specific task in less than 10 minutes. I have minimal programming experience.

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aristotle-dude

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That?s great about the multi-tasking. So are Windows, Linux, and Unix. Good to know.

BTW, I believe he?s looking for the professional look that any serious developer wants. See that to me is a huge inconvenience (having two different programs, one for UI, and one for the actual code) that?s avoided using either SharpDevlop or VS.net. But no, Apple can do no wrong! When they do something it is always the right way of doing it.

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Listen, username(), I use VS at work. Why don't you do us all a favour and STFU. You sound like MSFT can do no wrong. There are some serious usability flaws in VS 2003 which are being fixed in Widbey.

I personally can only speak of using VS as a professional developer but i have played around with Interface builder and Xcode at home a bit. Yes there are some advantages to having the interface designer and code editor project manager in one app but the Apple approach has the advantage of the interface design (.nib file) and localisation files existing out side of the source code and the compiled executable.

It is a more modular approach which many developers are using for localisation of .NET apps/web projects. The strings are stored in resource files and are reference by the application at runtime.

I'm sorry but multitasking on XP sucks. They f*cked it up trying to bring game compatibility to NT. I preferred Windows 2000 Pro as it was not so likely to allow one process to hog the entire system. I speak from "real" experience with MSFT tools at work.

Edited by aristotle-dude
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username();

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I find it completely humorous that you would use such a silly example. As for intellisense, it drives me up the wall.

By your logic, VB.Net is superior to C# because it is less verbose. VB.NET is not something I would recommend as it has way too much hold over from VB.

:rolleyes:

You may not like the syntax of it but that does not change the fact that you can write a web browser with webcore in few lines of code or a number of other useful programs with very little effort using other core frameworks on OS X.

585751189[/snapback]

All I was proving was that .net looked cleaner (to prove another persons post wrong).

Nice tutorial reference you pulled there. I read that one (the Apple web browser). But you see, ask MOST developers who do alot of programming, and they will tell you that IntelliSense is a powerful productivity tool. Plus the .net API is easier to read, and understand then the Cocoa one.

So let?s look at how we make a form with a web browser in .net:

	class myWebBrowser
	{
 ?[System.STAThread]
 ?static void Main(string[] args)
 ?{
 ?	System.Windows.Forms.Form myWebBrowserForm = new System.Windows.Forms.Form();
 ?	myWebBrowserForm.Controls.Add(new AxSHDocVw.AxWebBrowser());
 ?	myWebBrowserForm.ShowDialog();
 ?}
	}

Tell me, how do you do the same in that little code, and with that ease in Cocoa?

Edited by username();
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the_snitch

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Im learning C at the moment, and i do just fine. Infact, the GCC compiler is included straight in Xcode. And i prefer Xcode to the windows compiler we use at Uni. It is quite user friendly, and has nice options for Automatic syntax coloring, indentation, and can automatilly close brackets when i open them etc.

It also points out errors in a way that makes it easier to debug.

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aristotle-dude

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There are also free Visual Studio Express releases for VB.NET, C#, etc., and you can get full C++ compatibility by either getting Microsoft's Services for Unix and using GCC natively or using something third-party like cygwin or MinGW32.

Edit: Also, Macs don't even use C++ for development. They have their own spin-off of C called Objective C. RAD (rapid application development, ex. VB, .NET) is also somewhat lacking on the Mac.

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So you are saying that you cannot write a C/C++ application with the included GCC? :rolleyes:

You are confusing Objective C (language) with the Cocoa API. If you have your heat set on C/C++, you can program against the BSD subsystem or against the Carbon API (for GUI apps).

Really? What about Real Basic?

They are even offering as free upgrade for windows VB developers.

http://www.realsoftware.com/realbasic/vb6/index.php

Now granted, they are offering that for the windows version but all those VB 6 developers could be targeting windows, mac and linux users with products developed with it.

Do you honestly see a lot of desktop software being developed with .NET anytime soon?

MS could lose some developer mindshare.

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username();

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So you are saying that you cannot write a C/C++ application wit the included GCC? :rolleyes:

You are confusing Objective C (language) with the Cocoa API. If you have your heat set on C/C++, you can program against the BSD subsystem or against the Carbon API (for GUI apps).

Really? What about Real Basic?

They are even offering as free upgrade for windows VB developers.

http://www.realsoftware.com/realbasic/vb6/index.php

Now granted, they are offering that for the windows version but all those VB 6 developers could be targeting windows, mac and linux users with products developed with it.

Do you honestly see a lot of desktop software being developed with .NET anytime soon?

MS could lose some developer mindshare.

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Well, developers go where the money is. Small user base, little money. Right now the money is on Windows, and on Unix/Linux. Not Mac for the most part.

And even if a small fraction of Windows software is written with .net, its still more software then the mac has written for it. Plus starting with longhorn almost every single Windows app will be .net.

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