3 ms·
It makes a lot of sense and toolbox programming is a pain - it was quite low-level in its day too. The downside is the you end up with an app that runs on class
by pvg 5y ago
It makes a lot of sense and toolbox programming is a pain - it was quite low-level in its day too. The downside is the you end up with an app that runs on classic MacOS but doesn't look anything like a classic MacOS app. I think that's a problem somewhat inherent in the platform - the system-provided GUI programming model was primitive but users cared about the look/feel of the UI just as much if not more than now.
- RodgerTheGreat 5y agoI'm not sure I'd agree that the Mac toolbox is primitive. Reflowing forms to reflect a resizable window wasn't a common technique at the time; Macs had a predictable screen size and DPI. Abstracting the layout of a form from code via a resource was a very forward-thinking approach for the day. Among other advantages, fiddling with ResEdit was very empowering for users who might not even have access to the source code of an application!
- pvg 5y agoIt's not really primitive by intent but it's quite primitive in reality because of the drastic constraints on the original target platform. So yes, things like resources are a place where intent and implementation are relatively close but much of the rest of it isn't. Consider that System 6/7 are of the same vintage as Nextstep and the Nextstep model is still in very wide practical use today.