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Write Pure Python Cocoa Apps

Posted by pudge on from the cuckoo-for-cocoa-apps dept.

bbum writes "Today, Ronald Oussoren and I patched the PyObjC (PythonObj-C) bridge to allow for completely standalone Cocoa applications that are implemented in Python. My 11-Oct-2002 weblog entries provide more detail and includes a link to a PyObjC Cocoa app that can be downloaded and hacked upon (with the app, you can actually create other apps without using the dev tools at all!). As the days pass, I'll be updating the 'blog with new software, updates, etc. A Fink package will be submitted shortly. (In reality -- Ronald did the hard stuff in that he figured out how to subclass ObjC classes in Python!!)" Nifty. Note there is also a PerlObjCBridge module included with Jaguar, and there's also CamelBones for Perl-Cocoa; what other scripting frameworks for Mac OS X are out there?

1 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. great news! by Panix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is absolutely excellent news! I downloaded this the second I read the article, and I have been playing with it for a few hours now. It works almost flawlessly. The only thing that could really make this better is if Apple picked it up and integrated Python as a first class citizen along with Java and Objective-C in Interface Builder and Project Builder.

    People may ask "what's the point?" Well, for starters, Python is absolutely fantastic for building things quickly, especially for complex object or data structures that would take much more time to implement in Objective-C or Java.

    On top of this, Python is much better suited for Cocoa than Java! Apple implemented the Java-Cocoa bridge mostly for the sake of having Java be a "supported language." But, since Java is inflexible and strongly typed, it doesn't really fit into the Objective-C model that Cocoa relies on. Python on the other hand is perfectly suited for Cocoa. Python is weakly typed and can handle the dynamic runtime of Cocoa a lot better than a language like Java.

    In addition to this, Python's runtime is much more compact than Javas, and manages to load much more quickly. Just fire up Terminal.app and type "python" ... you will see the interactive Python interpreter fire up within a second. Its an amazing little language =)

    I am very excited about the potential of this Python/Cocoa implementation! In the first hour or so since I installed this, I was able to take an existing Python backend and add a quick Cocoa frontend, using nothing but the standard OS X Development Tools.

    Kudos to the great people who developed this!