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Cocoa or Carbon?
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Senior User
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Merry Land
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Okay all, I'm not trying to start a flame war here...I know people are very dedicated to their programming environment of choice, but...
I am a web programmer that would like to get a start in building apps for the Mac. Which would you recommend I learn? Carbon or Cocoa? Why? I know that each has its respective benefits and shortcomings, I would just like to see which language would suit me best.
Thanks!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Evansville, IN
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Cocoa and carbon are not languages. they are APIs. if you want to use Carbon, then you gotta learn C. if you want to use Cocoa, you gotta learn Objective C (which would mean basically learning C first anyway). if you are new to the whole programming thing other than web programming, pull your hair out learning Cocoa. its the real language 
yes, I probably just started flamewar. bite me.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
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As Justin said, Carbon and Cocoa are not languages. However, the Cocoa APIs are mostly tied to a specific language--Objective-C.
I would recommend you learn Cocoa. Here's my short, general breakdown of the two APIs' benefits:
Cocoa
- Tied to Objective-C, which is both powerful and easy to understand. (I could go on for a while about how shiny Objective-C is, but that's a bit of a tangent, I suppose.)
- Has a large library of classes that do most of the rote work (even down to some picture manipulations) for you.
- Can integrate Carbon calls fairly easily if you need to.
- Inherently Object-Oriented.
Carbon
- Can be written in plain C or C++, which makes it more portable to other operating systems that don't have Objective-C compilers.
- If coded right, applications can be run on OS 9.
- Has access to some OS functions that Cocoa doesn't (e.g. using resource forks, making files invisible)--though Cocoa applications can call these functions.
Basically, Cocoa is much easier to use. Carbon is relatively difficult and huge. Cocoa applications aren't very portable, but I wouldn't recommend you start with Carbon.
One other little thing that gets me: The Cocoa documentation seems to be much better than Carbon's. Any amateur progrogrammer knows there's a difference between, say, a short and a short *, but somehow they manage to screw up the distinction on every other page I read.
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Chuck
___
"Instead of either 'multi-talented' or 'multitalented' use 'bisexual'."
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Senior User
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Merry Land
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Thanks guys. I found another thread which recommended a great Cocoa book, so I made a trip to Borders to get that and a book on C.
So far so good. 
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Sep 1999
Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada
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Originally posted by snerdini:
Thanks guys. I found another thread which recommended a great Cocoa book, so I made a trip to Borders to get that and a book on C.
So far so good.
I hope that Cocoa book was the Aaron Hillegass book! I'm going through that now - it's fantastic.
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Senior User
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Merry Land
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Originally posted by hayesk:
I hope that Cocoa book was the Aaron Hillegass book! I'm going through that now - it's fantastic.
Yes, it most certainly is.
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Meida, PA USA
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Originally posted by snerdini:
Yes, it most certainly is.
Congradulations! I've been reading it and it's great stuff.
If you get stuck, questions some code, etc., check out the book's entry at:
http://www.techstra.net/
very useful extras as you work through the book. Best of luck!!
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Junior Member
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Australia
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Apple not only supplies developers the opportunity to develop in Obj-C or Carbon. With the advent of Java 1.4.1 on OSX. Java has core benefits that rival its competing environments.
- Fast and getting Faster - See JVM 1.4.1
- Cross Platform
- The fastest growing Developer community in the world 2+ million developers
- Huge IT and blue chip backers
- Not Limited to Apple as your sole provider
- Pure Objected Orientated
- Easy to learn
- Scalable, Network Centric
- The Language of the internet
- Lots of employment opportunities
- A great general purpose language covering the range from server side (J2EE) to clients side (J2SE) applications and phone , pda's (J2ME) .
- Backed by Apple, IBM, Sun, Nokia, Sony, etc.
- Realistic and only opposition to MS and .NET
Do yourself a favour and look into Java.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Status:
Offline
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Aside from the first point (which I hope was a joke), Dogwood makes some good points.
I still like Cocoa/ObjC better, but if you're the sort who's actually into reaching a broad audience, Java is a pretty nice choice.
Just felt like chiming in on the tangent.
(Last edited by Chuckit; Nov 6, 2002 at 11:42 AM.
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Chuck
___
"Instead of either 'multi-talented' or 'multitalented' use 'bisexual'."
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