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Analogies aside, Objective-C gave rise to NeXT and Lotus Improv on the NeXT which were the greatest things. I'm not particularly attached to the language but wo

Analogies aside, Objective-C gave rise to NeXT and Lotus Improv on the NeXT which were the greatest things. I'm not particularly attached to the language but wonder why we don't have nice things like those anymore.

jhbadger 2y ago
Even on MacOS. I was playing with XCode recently (I don't normally do Mac development as such even though I use Macs as my primary computers) and was disappointed to see that they've gotten rid of Interface Builder as far as I can tell, as that was one of the greatest things modern MacOS inherited from NextStep.
- fzzzy 2y ago
  Interface Builder has just been integrated into Xcode for a very long time now.
  - jhbadger 2y ago
    I don't claim to be an expert on Xcode but when I was playing with Xcode 15 the UI editor seemed nothing like Interface Builder -- not only from NextStep but even from earlier versions of Xcode.
    - robinsonrc 2y ago
      You may have been working in a SwiftUI project which does things differently from the older IB ways
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    Interface Builder was the coolest thing, especially its struts-n-springs-constraints. Xcode is in contrast among the worst visual builder I've used, everything feels so tedious. (AutoLayout is the real thing and Xcode's UI feels 2nd class.) Did they also get rid of those connections between code and widgets? That would make sense as it's such a lone mechanism to be foreign to most now.
    - galad87 2y ago
      Struts-n-springs-constraints and outlets are still available.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    I wish it hadn’t been. It’s been considerably more slow and buggy ever since the merge. Pre-merge I loved using it, but post-merge I avoid it in favor of code, except for Mac projects which is where it’s least buggy.
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  I guess I'm too young to understand the phrase "Even on MacOS" here, as the developer experience I personally know on MacOS is worse than the one on Windows in a variety of ways, and it's not a high bar.
leetrout 2y ago
Can you further detail the "nice things"? Is it "why is electron the easiest way to ship desktop software on every platform?" Or something else? A quality without a name?
st3fan 2y ago
Nice things like nil pointers and a foundation of C.
- pavlov 2y ago
  The C foundation was absolutely essential for doing real-world useful things in Objective-C. Writing a GUI image editor? Your underlying pixel buffer types can be plain C and you can use all the C libraries that exist. No cost of bridging those data types to the late-bound object-oriented Obj-C world where your GUI is implemented, and no constricting interface hoops like Java Native Interface. If your GUI code needed to read a pixel, you could just do C pointer arithmetic right there. And the same goes for audio, networking, and anything else you can imagine on a desktop where all the underlying stuff is C.
ck45 2y ago
And don't forget WorldWideWeb, the first web client created by Tim Berners-Lee

jhbadger 2y ago

Even on MacOS. I was playing with XCode recently (I don't normally do Mac development as such even though I use Macs as my primary computers) and was disappointed to see that they've gotten rid of Interface Builder as far as I can tell, as that was one of the greatest things modern MacOS inherited from NextStep.

fzzzy 2y ago
Interface Builder has just been integrated into Xcode for a very long time now.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  I don't claim to be an expert on Xcode but when I was playing with Xcode 15 the UI editor seemed nothing like Interface Builder -- not only from NextStep but even from earlier versions of Xcode.
  - robinsonrc 2y ago
    You may have been working in a SwiftUI project which does things differently from the older IB ways
- karmakaze 2y ago
  Interface Builder was the coolest thing, especially its struts-n-springs-constraints. Xcode is in contrast among the worst visual builder I've used, everything feels so tedious. (AutoLayout is the real thing and Xcode's UI feels 2nd class.) Did they also get rid of those connections between code and widgets? That would make sense as it's such a lone mechanism to be foreign to most now.
  - galad87 2y ago
    Struts-n-springs-constraints and outlets are still available.
- jwells89 2y ago
  I wish it hadn’t been. It’s been considerably more slow and buggy ever since the merge. Pre-merge I loved using it, but post-merge I avoid it in favor of code, except for Mac projects which is where it’s least buggy.
ryukoposting 2y ago
I guess I'm too young to understand the phrase "Even on MacOS" here, as the developer experience I personally know on MacOS is worse than the one on Windows in a variety of ways, and it's not a high bar.

leetrout 2y ago

Can you further detail the "nice things"? Is it "why is electron the easiest way to ship desktop software on every platform?" Or something else? A quality without a name?

st3fan 2y ago

Nice things like nil pointers and a foundation of C.

pavlov 2y ago
The C foundation was absolutely essential for doing real-world useful things in Objective-C. Writing a GUI image editor? Your underlying pixel buffer types can be plain C and you can use all the C libraries that exist. No cost of bridging those data types to the late-bound object-oriented Obj-C world where your GUI is implemented, and no constricting interface hoops like Java Native Interface. If your GUI code needed to read a pixel, you could just do C pointer arithmetic right there. And the same goes for audio, networking, and anything else you can imagine on a desktop where all the underlying stuff is C.

ck45 2y ago

And don't forget WorldWideWeb, the first web client created by Tim Berners-Lee