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Hacking Quartz
Exposed writes "Meaty interview with Rich Wareham who is known to Linux users for his libdvdnav library which is used by Xine and other linux players. On OS X he created Desktop Manager, the GPL solution for VirtualDesktops on the Mac. Highlights are secret APIs in OS X for VirtualDesktops, who steals GPL source and why beginner programmers are at a disadvantage now."
I am just curious why OS X didnt' support this out of the box with at least Panther. Is it just me or was this a no-brainer?
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
I don't really understand why Apple doesn't offer them. I've hears several reasons: the dock, expose, tranparent windows, or whatever makes them unnecessary, they're confusing for new users, etc, etc. But none of these addres the fact that Aqua WITH optionally selectable virtual windows (selectable for the "advanced user") is BETTER than WITHOUT. You can make all the same arguments for the presence of Terminal: it's unnecessary and confusing for the majority of users, but I bet few Mac users would want Apple to leave it out.
ever heard of visual basic?
Good
Does that mean that it's good code? Absolutely. But not startlingly good code, since most of the heavy lifting was done by the OS itself (Apple uses similar transitions for switching between multiple users, for example - which would lead me to belive that had Apple done this they would have used something visually distinctive for the desktop switch, come to think of it).
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
With the old home computers one could get instant gratification by writing a program which drew a space-ship on the screen in 10 lines of BASIC. Nowadays you'd have to learn COM + Win32 + DirectX just to get a black rectangle.
Amen.
It required at least 300+ lines of Visual C++ to get a black screen and almost 150 lines of C++ to get SDL to throw up a black screen.
What the hell is going on here?!?! I know a lot of things need to be set up, resolution, sound, etc. But most people were happy with the default options they were given on those old computers. They made Elitle out of it for christs sake.
So how come I can't start a gaming project with a simple
Setup_SDL(SDL_STANDARD_OPTIONS);
Is it too much to ask?
May the Maths Be with you!
It's UK english for stealing.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
...the distance between a beginning programmer and what you see commercially available is eons apart, compared with before.
I programmed my C64 with "state-of-the-art" GFX (320x240x16 color, woot), SFX/music (think PC squeaker-like), most else was limited by memory/CPU constraints. In retrospect maybe my AI and gameplay wasn't quite up to par, but I was very close at least.
One thing is to get a person started - which is hard enough, true, but it's also takes a lot more before you feel you're doing something that feels "cool". Something you could compare to everything that's out there and in some small, limited way be better than. Because once you've done that, you begin to believe you can do it in every other way as well.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I've heard that, generally speaking, some API calls are inserted into production libraries before they're truly meant to be used. Seems like this could potentially be such a case. But I do agree that in almost all cases, APIs should be as open as possible -- plenty of good ideas have come out of independent shops as a result of having good tools (APIs) available and well documented.
How is this giving Apple's consumer applications an advantage? What this shows is where Apple has optimized security and performance within the WindowServer and its functionality of Expose in conjunction with the Dock.
This has nothing to do with Apple utilizing a secret API for all its consumer applications like Final Cut Pro, etc to put it one leg up on the competition.
This has everything to do with strictly improving the performance of the Operating System and core functionality that all applications may benefit from by the fact they are written for OS X. There isn't a Core Graphics for third parties and a Core Graphics for in-house. Get real folks.
Sure the programming tools we have now are way more powerful than before, and you can as you say reach a much larger audience.
But, there are two problems:
1) How to know that anything is there, and
2) The widespread display of programming is not really there for the masses.
For (1), consider than before programming was like an old scooter left on the sidewalk. Anyone could see it was there, pick it up, and mess around. They might not get very far but it gave a feeling for driving.
Now the scooter is gone, and you have a sleek black porche out in the back alley with the keys in the ignition. Unless you go looking you aren't even going to know the porche is there or that you can use it - there's very little material today that tells kids how cool and easy it is to get into programming. Then of course even if people find the porche many will be too daunted by all the array of features and power to even go forward with driving it - even though the keys are right there! Open up an IDE and just imagine it's the first thing like ti you've ever seen. Even the tutorials can be overwhelming to a kid!
Now you also brought up the ability to code things that are more widley viewed and used. That is true and is a great appeal, but let's say a kid does learn some kind of server side programming (the only way to do anything really cool - you can only go so far with Javascript). Well how is he going to host it? Where are the super cheap kids hosting servers that come bundled with computers? Do schools do this nowadays (I have not heard of any supporting student CGI space [perhaps that's just as well, it would no doubt be only ASP servers]) Even though potentially a kid COULD write something that would be used far and wide, the actual ability to do so is not there for most people.
Once people break through the initial hurdles it is much easier to produce stuff now. But the hurdles are far greater than they used to be when I was a kid. Not to mention I doubt I EVER would have got into programming if I were just able to buy the plethora of games they have now instead of writing some of my own from time to time!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't buy this "it's much harder these days to start programming" bullshit. It's purely a perceived problem because apps are more complex these days, and there are lots of them. But don't expect to write complex stuff when you start.
:)
Hell, the first program I 'wrote' on my Commodore PET was something that made a rocket fly up the screen over and over. It was very simple. You could accomplish the same these days on any machine by downloading gcc and writing a C program of frankly a very similar length and nature.
I don't actually remember my PET or my BBC Micro running ICQ or browsing the web, or doing any of these things that people seem to think they can just pick up a compiler and throw together in a few days.
Stuff has got more complicated, and people expect more features and UI. But to complain that it's hard to get started is just not true.
Hell, with the GUI toolkits around now, it's actually way easier to do some of these cool things. Think back to the early days of GUI programming. From my own experience, programming RISC OS GUI apps was horribly complex and difficult to get going with. On the other hand, I remember how cool I thought it was when I realised that the OS did stuff like those handy edit boxes for you - you didn't have to do anything!
I don't know, it may be that the market for "programmers" is poor, but that doesn't mean there isn't a need for a higher level of computer literacy in the general population. If you're someone in another specialty (e.g., you're mainly a biologist) and have some programming skills, then there's probably a lot of people that will be very happy to have you around.
That's all true, it's amazing that these days you can get such high-powered hardware so cheaply, and run entire operating systems entirely from code that you can tinker with.
On the other hand, even the lowest-end machine has so many other distractions on it now--games, email, etc. The basic interpreter was sometimes the only fun thing that came with the cheap home computers of the 80's--the only way to get a game might be to spend money on a cartridge or type one in from a magazine--whereas now you have to dig a little and look up documentation elsewhere to find a programming environment for your new PC.
--Bruce Fields
> instead improving on them to give DesktopManager better support.
What Rich said was that the Set/GetWorkspace functions were upgraded to work with Expose. Supporting DM might be just a side effect.
Highlights are secret APIs in OS X for VirtualDesktops
/.ers to start bashing Apple as hard as you do Microsoft for secret APIs, or are you guys a bunch of hypocrits?
OK... time for you
I'm still waiting for Expose to have a way to move windows around with the mouse. At least as an option. I like the feature, but often I find myself wanting to reorder the windows after it does so (put all the important stuff on one side, web stuff on the other, etc. If I could do that, AND Expose could remember it, the feature would be an absolute godsend. It would literally be like having a physical desk organized by work.
My first home machine was a TI-99/4a bought for me by my parents. It didn't take too long for me to get tired of my little "space shuttle" dodging blocks, and I wanted to do more. That meant getting and learning extra stuff, whether it meant the Extended Basic module or getting the expansion box so I could use C or Pascal.
Ah, memories.
But consider, ( at least in the case of my old DOS VGA graphics ) accidently writing outside the video buffer would bring the computer down. Completely. As in hard-reset.
Nowadays, the OS just brings up a dialog saying "blech! crashed!" or something.
It's a fair trade.
If you want easy prgramming today, you might have to go through a shell of some sort. Squeak might fit the bill [ http://www.squeak.org/ ].
The point is, modern systems are *robust* and as such, there's a higher point of entry. Nothing to see here. Move on.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
I've been using IB and Xcode so I agree it's very powerful...
However you must admit it takes a little work to get into! I don't think I could just point a ten-year-old at the thing and say "here you go!". You have to understand about message passing, how to link components, and so forth.
And as I said it would be nice if Apple made reference to such things existing in the manuals you get with the computer. Most people probably have no idea there are there.
Applescript Studio is probably a good starting point for many people, perhaps they will push that more for newcomers to the system.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
On my powerbook, it came with php and perl. I can utilize the man pages for info. But documentation for the beginner is still scarce. I knew what to look for and where to go at least.
Programming is not introduced to students like it used to be. Now HS students are taught applications, not how to make the computer do something that someone else hasn't already installed onto it. Our youth are being deprived of the education on computers that was offered in the 80's.
I, for one, will instruct my children on the creation and use of various scripts and languages for their own personal use. (I will teach them about GPL, of course.)
Link in sig.
I'm assembling a number of tutorials on doing software rendering using JavaScript. I used to think it wasn't good for much but after doing textured polygons with a color key my opinion has changed. Since it's all software the concepts can be transfered to any language that can plot a pixel, do math and store an array.
I've also written a graphical adventure game in TI BASIC as well as some pretty basic 2D and 3D demos. Most of my graphics stuff is now done in OpenGL. I've worked with DirectX quite a bit in the past.
Programming is no harder to get into now that it was X years ago. It's just that kids think they can do anything so they try to start out making the next Quake or MMO instead of starting with the basics and working their way up.
You can also find QBasic and QuickBASIC on-line and Libraries still have books on programming in the language.
The problem isn't that these languages aren't available. It's that they aren't "cool" and everyone tells them they absolutly must start with a C style language or they'll forever be corrupted. So they go to C and find out they can't do anything interesting so they just quit. If I had been forced to start with C, I wouldn't be a programmer.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Lots of people are mentioning PHP and so forth.
You are perfectly right that Basic was really a scripting language. But try to imagine you are ten years old.
PHP is very easy to download. But how do you hear of it? How do you even know what it is to download? Even as a professional programmer I would have said to use PHP for web apps but not to learn programming with.
Also, what were you trying to program for? When I was a kid I did not really program just for the sake of programming. I perhaps wrote a small utlity that did some calculation I was interested in. My cousin did fractal generation. I might type in a game from a magazine and decide I wanted to improve on it.
So now you have a kid not knowing here to start, because there is not central starting place. Then you have the will of the kid to even figure out where to start, the barrier of having enough interest to create something he cannot just download.
Perhaps things like Mindstorms are taking the place of traditional programming. I'm not really sure. But it does seem like a kid could not be led into programming as much by accident anymore, he would definatley have to seek it out. And that will always eliminate some people from the path, that might otherwise have liked programming quite a bit. Obviously people do still learn programming now, where are the sixteen-year olds and how did they pick up programming? That's what I'd like to know.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now, in general, we tend to think of choice as a Good Thing(tm). But it's not always so -- e.g. when choice means incompatibility, confusion, fragmentation, duplicated effort.
For example, here in the UK we have (basically) just one mobile phone system: GSM. That terrible restriction on our liberties means that mobile phones can work on all networks, and there's coverage almost everywhere. Result: mobiles are cheap, and just about everyone has one. In the US, so I gather, there's the wonderful free choice of GSM, CDMA, and goodness knows what else. Result: expensive phones, no coverage, lots of vendor lock-in, and mobiles are less popular. Lack of choice can be a good thing.
The computing world is surprisingly close in terms of interfaces, APIs, and protocols.
It's less so in terms of GUI features, admittedly, but some of the same economies of scale apply. However, I think Apple's principle here is that if a feature is done right, then people won't need alternatives.
Far better to have one option that works right, than ten competing alternatives, none of which does the job properly. Easier to learn, easier to document, easier to code to, easier to administer, easier to support.
Now, in this particular case, I do miss virtual desktops in OS X. (Codetek's is just too slow with the number of windows I have, and I can't use Desktop Manager in my 10.2...) I don't think Apple have come up with a better solution to the problem it solves. But I'm right behind most of Apple's other decisions. Simplicity and elegance are underrated virtues.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I just thought I'd add my 0.02$;
The close buttons on Safari's tabs are a feature I can't live without. Call me petty, but I've used Firefox's one close button on the far right, and I feel limited when I can't open up twenty tabs without looking at each of them before I can close them.
I have a huge list of people's blogs, and I open them all at the same time in countless tabs. There are some really boring people there, and I like being able to close the tab without having to view the page.
It's those little things that matter.
Also, you have to be really clumsy to accidentally click those tiny little exit buttons on the tabs.
karma: ouch!
Everyone here seems to be totally missing the point I am making. Yes there are a million tools around now. Yes there are 800MB of docs that ship with the Mac.
/Devloper - so you'd have to know to look there.
But think people, think like a ten year old!! You don't even know you want to program - and nowhere in the docs that come bundled with your shiny new computer (Windows or Mac) does it mention that tools to do so are bunlded with the computer (Mac) or that it is easy. On the Mac the development tools are not even in Applications, but under
And then once you're starting, you have to know about editors and compilers and IDE's and so forth to do all the things people are proposing. There's nothing truly basic to guide you through the first few steps of what is going on.
If I'm wrong then I would LOVE for all of the parents who are not programmers themselves and have kids that are picking up programming spontaeously to tell me how things are working out. But instead you have me, who has no kids, hypothizing a probem with kids being able to pick up programming easily, and a bunch of people who have obviosuly been programming for years and ALSO seem to have no kids, stating it's not the case and programming is super easy to get into. Our problem is we know to much, and have lost site of what you have to know even to get to the point where we can enter that eight line Java/C#/Applescript/PHP/Perl/Haskel/Ruby/Python program!
Yes it's all very easy once you choose a path and get started, and easy to dabble in multiple languages. But it's still harder than it used to be to go from the "I don't know what a program is" to "hey I just ran my first program" than it sused to be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How often does the average MAC user have a DVI viewer, c code, a TeX file, and a plotting program open?
I mean, they've got to develop for who they're selling to.