What could really make this better is a resolution feature in our system, which we’re working on right now. Giving the developer a way to say “this will be fixed as of [date]” and then asking the customer if they agree that it is fixed would help set expectations *and* compel the company to set good deadlines.

Again, thanks for taking a different approach. Love to see multiple viewpoints.

For me, the explanations are partly as you suggest, the iPhone and new projects to be working and focusing on. But I’ve also got a new baby in the house who is squeezing a lot of the spare time right out of my schedule

I hope to get back into a rhythm one of these days.

Daniel

The only point I am whole-heartedly disagreeing is this one:

“…. It does not. ”

Every time I’ve forced myself to unlearn a bunch of habits that served me well in one place, and relearn a different set of habits, I have been richly rewarded.

But “no learning curve”? Puh-leeze.

Warren

My point was that to learn Cocoa, you have to put aside your past experience and approach it fresh. If you expect Cocoa to work in a particular way, you often find yourself struggling and frustrated. When you do understand how something works, it is often easy, sensible, clean and self consistent, just different from what you might have expected. Therefore, putting aside your past experience makes the Cocoa learning process easier.

I am not trying to argue whether one method is better than the other.

As to your specific points, I would suggest you read Kevin Hoffman’s post linked at the top of the article, as he has experience with “Windows, and multiple frameworks and multiple types of development” and tackles many of the points you raise from a perspective that you may appreciate.

“You may love and understand and accept XCode+Cocoa+ObjectiveC, and thus you are completely biased” — but if you hate and fear it, you’re completely unbiased and objective? Nonsense.

“Take someone who has … zero Cocoa/NextStep experience, and there is indeed a very steep learning curve.” Compared to someone who “understands” Cocoa? Well, yes; that’s very insightful of you.

“Only a completely mac-centric snob would pretend that every other set of standards, rules and ideas for every other platform are inherently ‘worse’” — Paging Artie McStrawman…

Seriously, you make some good points, once the reader gets past the attitude. For many people whose background is in other programming environments, Cocoa is indeed a challenge to learn. For some, who have waited years to find an environment that more closely matches their own mental model of how programming should be, Cocoa is like a breath of fresh air — and *those* people are going to thrive in the new environment, while the others struggle.

There are many tradeoffs, weaknesses, and downright bizarre subtleties in learning Cocoa, and it does indeed have a very steep learning curve. Add in reference counting (if you use it) and garbage collection (if you use it), and the absolutely maddening “silent failures” that come as part at parcel of the Objective C messaging system — you can send a message to a nil object, it does nothing, and does it quietly — these are all part of what those of us with more than 2 platforms under our belt knowingly include in our estimation of the total learning curve of the platform.

You may love and understand and accept XCode+Cocoa+ObjectiveC, and thus you are completely biased. Take someone who has Linux/Unix, Windows, and multiple frameworks and multiple types of development (from non visual up to rich client, and web experience) but zero Objective C, and zero Cocoa/NextStep experience, and there is indeed a very steep learning curve.

Learning and unlearning are two words for the exact same thing. We could drop both words and say, and use an aquarium term here; Moving a fish from a tank with one extreme water chemistry, to another tank with extreme water chemistry causes stress on the fish. Moving from procedural to object oriented, from something rather more ad-hoc to something rather more like MVC, these all involve both learning and unlearning various habits. Only a completely mac-centric snob would pretend that every other set of standards, rules and ideas for every other platform are inherently “worse”, and that thus, learning Mac was easy, except for unlearning all the “damage” done to you by every other tool on the planet.

W