4 ms·

As I recall, the "official" language of early Mac development was Pascal - just normal Pascal, not any of the OOP extensions like Clascal or Object Pascal. All

As I recall, the "official" language of early Mac development was Pascal - just normal Pascal, not any of the OOP extensions like Clascal or Object Pascal. All of the documentation in Inside Macintosh assumed you were using Pascal, and most Toolbox routines took Pascal strings (one byte length + up to 255 characters) as arguments. But none of it used any OOP features - it was all entirely procedural.

pjmlp 1y ago
Only if you are talking about UCSD Pascal on the early Apple systems, which the article touches on. AppToolbox exists and has required for all Mac systems since the classic model. It was later on replaced by the C++ version when MPW was introduced, and all the plain C like functions, where actually C++ under the hood with extern "C". Apple like Microsoft and IBM, all pretty much into OOP for userspace frameworks early on, where UNIX birthplace of C++, was still a C land for the most part, with exception of efforts at Sun and NeXT.
- duskwuff 1y ago
  > Only if you are talking about UCSD Pascal on the early Apple systems I'm not. If you aren't familiar, take a look at the original edition of Inside Macintosh, particularly the "summary" sections (e.g. page 213 of the PDF for QuickDraw): https://vintageapple.org/inside_o/pdf/Inside_Macintosh_Volume_I_1985.pdf https://vintageapple.org/inside_o/pdf/Inside_Macintosh_Volum... Notice that all of the definitions are written as Pascal data types and function definitions. > AppToolbox exists and has required for all Mac systems since the classic model. The "Toolbox" was a general term for Apple's ROM and system routines. It did not refer to a specific programming language or development environment. (See page 21 of the PDF linked above for a definition.) > It was later on replaced by the C++ version when MPW was introduced, and all the plain C like functions, where actually C++ under the hood with extern "C". This is not accurate. Apple never "replaced" the Toolbox routines in classic Mac OS - they were called from C instead of Pascal as developers shifted to that language, but the routines all remained the same (often still using Pascal data types for types like strings, as I mentioned earlier). There was never any official C++ interface to the Toolbox.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    I was referring to MacApp, as I often get those mixed together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacApp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacApp Which was then rewritten into C++, after MPW introduction, while eventually most of the developer community migrated into PowerPlant from Metroweks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPlant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPlant The code was rescued into Github, https://github.com/chrisballinger/powerplant https://github.com/chrisballinger/powerplant
    - duskwuff 1y ago
      MacApp was never required for Mac OS development, though - it was an entirely optional "userspace" development framework which used the Toolbox just like any other MAc OS application.

pjmlp 1y ago

Only if you are talking about UCSD Pascal on the early Apple systems, which the article touches on. AppToolbox exists and has required for all Mac systems since the classic model. It was later on replaced by the C++ version when MPW was introduced, and all the plain C like functions, where actually C++ under the hood with extern "C". Apple like Microsoft and IBM, all pretty much into OOP for userspace frameworks early on, where UNIX birthplace of C++, was still a C land for the most part, with exception of efforts at Sun and NeXT.

duskwuff 1y ago
> Only if you are talking about UCSD Pascal on the early Apple systems I'm not. If you aren't familiar, take a look at the original edition of Inside Macintosh, particularly the "summary" sections (e.g. page 213 of the PDF for QuickDraw): https://vintageapple.org/inside_o/pdf/Inside_Macintosh_Volume_I_1985.pdf https://vintageapple.org/inside_o/pdf/Inside_Macintosh_Volum... Notice that all of the definitions are written as Pascal data types and function definitions. > AppToolbox exists and has required for all Mac systems since the classic model. The "Toolbox" was a general term for Apple's ROM and system routines. It did not refer to a specific programming language or development environment. (See page 21 of the PDF linked above for a definition.) > It was later on replaced by the C++ version when MPW was introduced, and all the plain C like functions, where actually C++ under the hood with extern "C". This is not accurate. Apple never "replaced" the Toolbox routines in classic Mac OS - they were called from C instead of Pascal as developers shifted to that language, but the routines all remained the same (often still using Pascal data types for types like strings, as I mentioned earlier). There was never any official C++ interface to the Toolbox.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  I was referring to MacApp, as I often get those mixed together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacApp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacApp Which was then rewritten into C++, after MPW introduction, while eventually most of the developer community migrated into PowerPlant from Metroweks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPlant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPlant The code was rescued into Github, https://github.com/chrisballinger/powerplant https://github.com/chrisballinger/powerplant
  - duskwuff 1y ago
    MacApp was never required for Mac OS development, though - it was an entirely optional "userspace" development framework which used the Toolbox just like any other MAc OS application.