Comments on: Hi, I’m Cathy

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:45:34 +0000

Hi Cathy. I’m a teacher by day, teaching myself at night to program Cocoa. I stumbled on your blog trying to figure out custom cells (ie looking for code to steal) and I was so stunned by the beauty of some of your designs that I came to this article to read more. I don’t know much but I can tell you’ve got some real skills and knowing that you’re self-taught as well helps me push on when I question why I’m devoting all this time and energy to slowly plodding along in Cocoa with not much to show for it. Thanks for existing!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:05:46 +0000

Hi Cathy, I found your blog after searching for resources to help me learn Objective-C/Cocoa. I haven’t had much of a look around yet.

I too am self taught, but have the misfortune of many years experience using Visual Basic. It is this I blame for my lack of understanding of Objective-C!
I am currently reading through Stephen Kochan’s book Programming in Objective-C 2.0 and also have Aaron Hillegass’ book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X.

I only do this as a hobby, but am really interested in learning the correct way to go about designing an application - as I usually just start coding and keep adding to it until it does what I want…

Any suggestions for resources to help me would be greatly appreciated.

By: Tim Buchheim

Tim Buchheim — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:41:09 +0000

I love your blog, Cathy.

It’s good to have someone pointing out the flaws in AppKit. We all know that they’re there, but over time they get so ingrained in one’s way of doing things that people end up defending poor choices that NeXT or Apple made years ago rather than thinking about what can be done to fix things.

So it’s quite refreshing to see thoughtful analysis of what’s wrong in Cocoa and useful ideas on how to go about fixing them.

By: Scott Stevenson

Scott Stevenson — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:02:00 +0000

@John: I think you may have missed my point. The momentum of custom views is not about the stock controls not being “good enough,” but that many apps want to have their own identity. For example, I don’t think it makes sense for Apple to generalize the type of views used by Delicious Library or Front Row.

In some cases, generalization does make sense, which is why IKImageBrowserView showed up to serve iPhoto-like needs. But IKImageBrowserView is also an excellent example of why customization isn’t completely simple. The view is not just a bunch of static bitmaps — there are animations, behaviors, and so on. All of this could be customized via API in theory, but somebody would have to figure out a way it could be useful across a wide range of cases.

Understand I’m not arguing against Cathy’s idea. I think it makes a lot of sense. But for it to be implemented there would have to be some feedback filed, preferably with specific examples.

By: John

John — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:41:33 +0000

“…and I think maybe the reason the view layout system doesn’t come up as a major obstacle is many apps use custom composite views now, where as almost all apps in the past used combinations of stock views and controls.”

In other words: existing developers have written their own implementation of almost all view classes, because the stock ones were not good enough functionally or artistically. Good for them. But, what about the barrier of entry? What about new developers. 1. learn cocoa 2. rewrite all UI components. 7. after a long while, get back to your idea.

I would vote for Apple to include ProKit in standard sdk. They could still style their own apps differently to distinguish themselves, but the functionality would be there for other developers.

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:16:21 +0000

hehe! it works as long as you don’t bob your head or snore!

By: Cathy

Cathy — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:08:45 +0000

Lee, yeah I miss that!! I was just telling Dirk yesterday about the ‘one hand on the mouse and one hand on the keyboard’ maneuver you taught me

By: Lee

Lee — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:01:00 +0000

You are usually well spoken and are not quick to say something that you regret and I think this is another case of that. You didn’t say anything negative.

Oh, and I too love your blog! It’s like sitting in the same office with you again!

By: Cathy

Cathy — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:26:20 +0000

jcr - I think Andy Lee hit it right on the head. I was probably feeling much more bitchy than I let on in my words and felt guilt about that.

Either way, the list is going to be avalanched with beginner’s questions with all the new interest in Cocoa and its important to me to be helpful. The list is how I learned - I think it’s the best Cocoa recourse out there.

By: John C. Randolph

John C. Randolph — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:21:12 +0000

“I’m feeling absolutely terrible because I snapped at someone on the Cocoa-dev list today.”

Heh.

I’ve bounced on a few heads in my time for messages that I thought were unduly hostile to newbies, and yours wouldn’t even have registered as unfriendly.

Speaking as a former Cocoa-dev moderator, I’d say listen to Scott Anguish.

-jcr