Notes on John Siracusa’s Copland 2010 Revisited
A few quick remarks on Copland 2010 revisited: Apple’s language and API future:
- Java did not became popular because it was based on a Virtual Machine. It became popular because the language was reasonably simple, and it came with a usable class library. And it was marketed heavily – thus sounding the death knell to Smalltalk, which, as I remember from back then, was on the verge of becoming popular when suddendly Java appeared on the scene*.
- .NET did not became popular because of the CLR. It was because all other technologies Microsoft had at the time (Windows API, Visual Basic, Visual C++ 6**, MFC, COM, etc.) were horrible (or close to). .NET provided easier to use languages and a usable class library, plus a good migration path.
- Apple already has a great class library — Cocoa. Probably the best GUI class library/framework that’s out there. Objective-C(++) may have some quirks, but (especially in version 2.0) is still a good language. So, Apple is in no hurry to change things. Apart from that Apple now has LLVM, which is a great foundation for future development.
* ironically, Java brought also the end to OPENSTEP, an ancestor of today’s Cocoa, which Sun had licensed from NeXT
** to be fair: most other C++ compilers at the time sucked as well…
