Now using a Mac for over a year I would really like to do some programming for OS X. Just to learn something new (and do some “real” work instead of creating slides).
But Objective-C?
int main ( int argc, const char * argv[ ])
{
NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
NSLog ( @”Programming is fun! ”) ;
[pool drain];
return 0;
}
plain ugly. Mixing Smalltalk style message passing with C, throwing in some brackets like parentheses in Lisp? It gets worse: we have again to maintain an interface and an implementation file for each and every class. And even if there is now a garbage collector in Objective-C 2.0, you cannot use it when programming for the iPhone. Duh!
MacRuby
So I looked elsewhere, what about MacRuby? From Objective-C (Smalltalk-style):
[person setFirstName:first lastName:last]
to MacRuby’s
person.setFirstName(first, lastName:last)
or
person.setFirstName first, :lastName => last
To me that looks rather, hm, unbalanced? The first argument has other syntactic sugar than the second. Ok, I understand that there are limitations to Ruby’s malleability, and it sure is better than RubyCocoas:
person.setFirstName_lastName(first,last)
which even has other problems. I am not sure that I would like
person <= (firstName: first, lastName: last)
better, if that would be possible in Ruby.
Conclusion: undecided.
F-Script
Some time ago, when I was looking for a Smalltalk implementation for OS X (and don’t start with that ugly Squeak) I stumbled upon a Script language called F-Script. Its main goals are to provide
- an embeddable scripting language for OS X applications
- to have an interactive shell (REPL) to experiment with the APIs and to prototype solutions
It is not intended to write complete applications, but John Sterling has a nice blog entry, that shows how it could be done.
Perhaps this is the way to go. Remember: I do not want to create a real application, just to play around and have fun.
