Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!decwrl!shelby!Portia!Jessica!rick From: rick@Jessica.stanford.edu (Rick Wong) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Object Pascal Message-ID: <2280@Portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 15 May 89 20:38:54 GMT References: <1794@husc6.harvard.edu> Sender: USENET News System Reply-To: rick@Jessica.stanford.edu (Rick Wong) Distribution: na Organization: Stanford University Lines: 53 In article <1794@husc6.harvard.edu> siegel@endor.harvard.edu (Rich Siegel) writes: > - Do you use Object Pascal at all? Yes, for MacApp. > - Do you use MacApp? > - If so, why? Yes. Except for the slow turnaround time and the lack of a source-level debugger that understands objects, MacApp is the _best_ application- development platform for the Mac. Consider the usual litany of things MacApp handles for you: * the event-loop * windows * menus * scrolling AND autoscrolling * failure handling * filing * memory management * the clipboard * undo * printing * multiple documents MacApp also provides several view classes that are far easier to use than their Toolbox counterparts: control views (buttons, scrollbars, etc.), dialog views, a text-editing view, and grid/list views. As any Macintosh programmer will tell you, implementing all of these things using just the Mac Toolbox, _in conformance with the Macintosh user inter- face guidelines_, takes an inordinate amount of work. While I'm on my soapbox, I'd like to dispute a common myth about MacApp's learning curve. Many people claim it's slow, but compared to what? When I think about how much time it used to take me to get windows to scroll, or to write my own filing package, and I compare it with learning object- oriented design techniques and MacApp's class hierarchy, I think MacApp's a pretty good deal. In addition, many of the skills you learn with MacApp are applicable to other object-oriented toolkits (for instance, there's a good deal of overlap between MacApp and NeXT's AppKit). > - What Pascal compiler do you use? MPW. I would only use another compiler if it allowed me to use code writ- ten in other languages (C, C++, assembly). > Rich Siegel Rick Wong Courseware Authoring Tools Project, Stanford University rick@jessica.stanford.edu