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Alternative Development Systems for the Mac
Carlos Camacho writes "Programmers new to the Mac platform, as well as newbie Mac coders often ask (or complain) about available development tools. Most often, Apple's Xcode is recommended since it is free, and a pretty slick package. For cross-platform work, Metrowerks CodeWarrior series has been with us since the early PowerPC days, and is very flexible in its support for multi-platforms. But with if you want to work in a language other than Objective-C,C, C++ or Java? Or learn an entirely new language? How does the Macintosh fare? iDevGames, a site devoted to Mac game developers, has put together a list of "alternative" development tools for Mac OS X. A good number of the tools listed are either free, or low-cost. So, if you're interested in playing around with Lua, Ruby, something similar to HyperCard, or one of the many BASICs, check out "Alternative Development Systems for the Mac.""
Objective-C is slow, it eats memory, and its syntax is very verbose. Most languages don't have 120-some character method names. And for all that, it's still unsafe, and has very little in the way of static type-checking, and no garbage collector (a refcounter where you have to twiddle references a lot doesn't count). I would not call it "the most developer-friendly language every created." I'd much rather code in Python or O'Caml.
You want fast and a garbage collector?? Objective-C is slow? Um... not terribly. Large memory footprint? Not unless you're forgetting to deallocate objects, or just have a bad design. 120-some-character method names? Not typically, and verbose method names are actually good, if occasionally overdone. Yea, it's unsafe, it's a superset of C, of course it's unsafe. You really think Objective-C is less memory-hungry than Python or O'Caml? Interesting... I'd like to see your benchmarks there. It's clear we have different ideas of what makes a language developer-friendly. Access to C routines makes Objective-C developer-friendly in my book.
C is not a good choice for anything but the core of most games, as it is too developer-unfriendly and lacks in features (like OO, anonymous functions, garbage collection...). While excellent for low-level code, it's not really in the running for high-level.
C is great for the core of most calculation routines of any type. Which is how it is often used in the context of an Objective-C program. You don't always need high-level.
C++ is a good language for games, but many people would rather have something higher-level. It's unsafe, but many people will overlook.
Now you're making me wonder how many Python or O'Caml games there are out there. I guess there must be a few... any commercial ones? C++ when written correctly is awfully high-level, no? I can't belive you'd complain about Objective-C syntax and not C++ syntax...
Java is slow and verbose, and therefore painful for game development.
First, slow compared to what? Link me up with that Java/Python benchmark comparison. No, really. Something tells me you might just be making this stuff up, repeating something you read somewhere or something. Java used to be slow. Starting up a JVM can be slow. Some Swing drawing routines on some platforms can be slow. I'm also wondering, huh, do you think of programming in terms of anything besides games? Again, verbose in a programming language == readable == very good.
Maybe they want to code in Python?
Power to you. XCode documentation even has pointers as to how to set up a project for Python. Is Python sytax really less verbose than Objective-C? Is it really faster? Does it really have better, more complete libraries? Is there really a reason other than "I want to", which- don't get me wrong - I think is great reason... just maybe not one you can sell to the other folks working on your project, if you get my drift. Really, yea, Python is cool, but... why not Objective-C, again?