My first experience of
programming a Mac

I've been a hobbiest computer programmer for over a decade. I presently work as the lead software developer for a small corporation, writing some of the most advanced webapplications ever conceived. I know a handful of languages, and am comfortable with a number of APIs on a variety of platforms. I've been a Mac user for just over six years, and I'll tell you, I've always been afraid of programming the Mac. Until now.

And you know what I've found out? Objective-C and the Cocoa frameworks (along with XCode 2.x and Interface Builder) together have made for the most enjoyable coding experience of my life. I tell you no lies; I'd read the odd article about "how great objective-c is"... blah blah blah, but I never imagined it would be this easy. Before a few days ago, I'd never before written even a single line of ObjC code. And I knew absolutely nothing about the Cocoa frameworks. Without any books at all, just the tools and Apple's free online documentation, I've been able to grasp the concepts, pick up the syntax, and learn from trial and error by studying some sample code, and within hours I was well on my way to writing the foundation of what now, after only a few days is a fully functional application. Including multiple threads, a dynamic message queue, inter-thread notifications, an embedded TCP socket server, and a sweet looking front end. The front end has a drawer for socket messages, a canvas for rendering layouts, and is even able to access a custom config file on disk.

Put plainly, Cocoa and Objective-C Kick Ass. The dynamic typing, the shorthand referencing of member variables the ability to query objects on the fly, and select methods from dynamically composed strings, and the general thoroughness and maturity of the cocoa frameworks. It's just amazing. If you're a programmer, and you're interested in the mac, really... give it a try. I think you'll be amazed too.