Yeah, I lied. The truth is that I have not begun to code on the Mac. I have even removed all of the development tools from my system.
It’s not that I don’t want to code. It has more to do with two distinctly different things. First, I seriously lack the time and energy to sit down at home with my computer for any long stretch and program. Second, I really haven’t coded seriously in a long time. I am very out of practice, so much so that looking at anything besides a shell or Perl script, html or PHP looks very foreign.
Weaksauce! It’s cool… as much as I program I have done very little myself on my mac too. Time, like you pointed out, is hard to come by to pick up a programming environment and language just because its a cool thing to do. Maybe after school is over…
I began developing software for DOS 3.3 and ProDOS on my Apple II and if weren’t for something like HyperCard, I would have never thought it possible to program on the Macintosh. At least until High School computer classes came along and I learned Pascal. Now that was a party, making windows work well in normal applications was quite challenge. It’s as if Pascal wasn’t really meant for the GUI. If it weren’t for OOP, it would have been like a black art.
I admired the old days because everything seemed so simple. Having a machine with 64K was easier to literally POKE around but the 16-bit world of 512K was majestic with all of those Toolbox calls. In our 32 and 64-bit era, it seems strange and foreign so I can completely relate to your status of being out of touch. As a former Pascal and Basic programmer, I find shell-scripting far more easier than the subtleties of Java or C .
I believe these modern operating systems may receive a new language, far more capable at bringing the computer’s resources together and easier to adjust and program too. I’m tired of looking at the numerous and quite convoluted coding styles of Microsoft samples. Hopefully OS-X will deliever some simplicity to the nuances of development.
I digress but I hope you return to that scene victorious, just as the old days of your Junior High School Magnet Program.