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So I guess the question now is, has this changed much since 2009?

by salem 13y ago

namenotrequired 13y ago
I have zero experience with it myself but given this article to the top of HN today, I suppose not! :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6329490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6329490
mtdewcmu 13y ago
It didn't take long for Apple to accept the app of my recent former employer, and AFAIK, they have been accepting updates. So Apple might have gotten better about turnaround times. I feel that Apple is generally not all that friendly to developers: they make it hard to just start hacking on your device, with lots of bureaucratic hoops, app signings, developer accounts you need; you can't do any development without a Mac; they make little or no effort to ease the transition to their platform for developers new to Apple development -- there's only one programming language that's credible to develop in, and it's one that no one else in the industry uses; documentation is spotty and there don't seem to be a lot of good books out there. They obviously have a lot invested in ObjectiveC, and it goes way back to before they had a platform that stood to attract lots of new developers, so I get that it would be impractical to just drop ObjectiveC as the core language. But they could definitely do more to support standard scripting languages as viable alternatives to ObjC. I gather that they flirted with Python (or was it Ruby?) for a while, but then they dropped it. Google clearly did developers a favor by using Java and Linux as the platform. I'm not that personally fond of Java, but it's way better than some language that's totally bizarre and used by only one company (I'd make only one exception, if that company happened to be Microsoft, because MS has been big enough for long enough to create their own language, and I don't think they'd ever force something like ObjC on you anyway). I'm reminded of something I do like about Apple development -- I like that it's fully POSIX and BSD compatible, even on the phone. And they integrate and encourage popular open source libraries. But I'm not sure if they did that to cut developers a break, or just to save themselves time by using stuff that was already available.

So I guess the question now is, has this changed much since 2009?

by salem 13y ago

So I guess the question now is, has this changed much since 2009?

I have zero experience with it myself but given this article to the top of HN today, I suppose not! :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6329490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6329490

mtdewcmu 13y ago

It didn't take long for Apple to accept the app of my recent former employer, and AFAIK, they have been accepting updates. So Apple might have gotten better about turnaround times. I feel that Apple is generally not all that friendly to developers: they make it hard to just start hacking on your device, with lots of bureaucratic hoops, app signings, developer accounts you need; you can't do any development without a Mac; they make little or no effort to ease the transition to their platform for developers new to Apple development -- there's only one programming language that's credible to develop in, and it's one that no one else in the industry uses; documentation is spotty and there don't seem to be a lot of good books out there. They obviously have a lot invested in ObjectiveC, and it goes way back to before they had a platform that stood to attract lots of new developers, so I get that it would be impractical to just drop ObjectiveC as the core language. But they could definitely do more to support standard scripting languages as viable alternatives to ObjC. I gather that they flirted with Python (or was it Ruby?) for a while, but then they dropped it. Google clearly did developers a favor by using Java and Linux as the platform. I'm not that personally fond of Java, but it's way better than some language that's totally bizarre and used by only one company (I'd make only one exception, if that company happened to be Microsoft, because MS has been big enough for long enough to create their own language, and I don't think they'd ever force something like ObjC on you anyway). I'm reminded of something I do like about Apple development -- I like that it's fully POSIX and BSD compatible, even on the phone. And they integrate and encourage popular open source libraries. But I'm not sure if they did that to cut developers a break, or just to save themselves time by using stuff that was already available.