iPhone programming - impressions, opinions?

Question

I've been programming in C,C++,C# and a few other languages for many years, mainly for Windows and Linux but also embedded platforms. Recently started to do some iPhone programming as a side project so I'm using Apple platforms for the first time since my Apple II days. I'm wondering what other developers that are coming to Mac OSX, Xcode and iPhone SDK think. Here are my impressions, so far:

• Mac OSX: very confusing, I tend to end up with too many open windows and don't know what's where. Luckily there's the bird's eye view, without it I'd be lost. With the shell at least there's all the familiar stuff so that helps me a lot.

• Xcode: doesn't feel as good as VisualStudio or Eclipse, the two environments I'm familiar with. I think I could get used to it but I'm wondering if Apple wouldn't be better off with Eclipse. Before I found the setting where all the windows are stuck together I hated it, now I can tolerate it.

• iPhone SDK: strange indeed. I understand Apple's desire to control their environment but in this day and age it just seems a little sleazy and they are missing out on so much by destroying developer goodwill.

• Objective-C: I've known about it for years but never even took a look at it. The syntax is off-putting but I'm actually very intrigued by the language. I think it's an interesting third leg between C++ and C#, both of which I like a lot. Is there any chance Obj-C will break out of the Mac sandbox due to the uptick in the popularity of Apple technology?

Curious to read your thoughts,

Andrew

Answer 1

I'm in the same boat as you (somewhat). I've been developing in C# for 7 years, ever since .NET 1.0. Over the past couple weeks I've been teaching myself Cocoa and Objective-C. Here are my impressions (note for note with yours)

• Agreed in that clutter can be a problem. I tend to use Spaces heavily when developing in XCode (put XCode in one space, Interface Builder in another space, Instruments in a third space). If you don't have Leopard (and thus, no spaces), then use Command-H to hide your active window. Using that tends to clean things up quite a bit (however it'd be nice if you could command-h automagically the current window when command-tab'ing to another app).

• I'm liking XCode more and more. I hate Visual Studio - I find it to be unstable, slow, and well, just kind of a crappy IDE. Comparatively I've found XCode to be fast, stable, and I like how it organizes and filters your files. I'm not too up on my XCode shortcuts, but I'm hoping there's a way I can quick-switch from one class to another (similar to ctrl +n shortcut in ReSharper). Intellisense could be better with regards to how it displays to the user, but I really like how it essentially creates a template and you can ctrl + / to jump to the next argument in a message.

• I'm hating the documentation in XCode. The help system sucks, and for whatever reason it never finds what I'm searching for. I end up just googling for anything I need to know... I hope they improve the documentation. This is my biggest beef right now.

• Not quite there yet, as I'm going through the full Cocoa framework for Mac desktops. So far I'm really, really liking what I see. One thing I will say is that it would be nice if the iPhone SDK allowed for garbage collection...

• Objective-C - I've never used it, this is my first foray into it. At first I was kinda wierded out by the syntax and the square brackets for messaging, but it's really growing on me. It's so quick to skim a method and see the message calls that method makes. The more I use it, the more Objective-C just feels nice... however templating/generics would be a welcome addition to the language.

All in all, my foray into Mac development has been enjoyable, and I'm excited to start working (today! yay!) on some actual mac/iphone projects.

Answer 2

I agree with your sentiments. Coming from Microsoft development tools (and eclipse) to XCode is kind of harsh. XCode just feels... unfinished in some respects. It certainly doesn't have the polish that I come to expect from VS and Eclipse.

The SDK is similar, much of it is poorly documented, and there are a lot of holes where you know something should be, but it just isn't. Trying to carefully control audio/video file playback is one example.

Objective-C, however, is great. I really like the language, despite its quirks and idiosyncrasies (messages to null isn't a run-time exception? really?) Once your C++ eyes get used to the syntax, loosely-typed anonymous messaging actually ends up being really cool to play with (if somewhat dangerous and prone to RTEs.)