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Speaking of NeXT, I've yet to read a good history that explains how that came together. There's so much innovation there -- the NeXTStep kits (which became Coco
by lobster_johnson 10y ago
Speaking of NeXT, I've yet to read a good history that explains how that came together. There's so much innovation there -- the NeXTStep kits (which became Cocoa, among other things), Objective-C, the fact that they used a Unix kernel. It was a lot of great ideas, but I don't think I have heard about who designed it. It's interesting to note, for example, that NeXT didn't invent Objective-C; they licensed it from the two guys who created it, Tom Love and Brad Cox, neither of whom I think were involved in development of NeXTStep. I'd love to learn more.
- pvg 10y agoYes! Maybe eventually something like a NeXT version of folklore.org will emerge since the stories one hears from old NeXT hands easily give Andy Hertzfeld's a run for their money. (incidentally it wasn't just a Unix kernel but also the Mach microkernel. Interface Builder? Display Postscript? Sticking a DSP in the original machine? Lots of design decisions with potentially interesting history)
- osullivj 10y agoBrad Cox was a visionary, and his Planning the Software Industrial Revolution paper [1] from 1990 stands up well today. Especially worth referencing to any developer taking a dogmatic stance on static vs dynamic binding. [1] http://virtualschool.edu/cox/pub/PSIR/ http://virtualschool.edu/cox/pub/PSIR/