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The apps that come out for OS X Leopard in the next year will really drive the dividing line between Apple and Microsoft home.

The next step will be to demonstrate that difference to potential new customers.

They keep saying this, but has anyone ever seen anything new?

I have.

What can I do if I want to program? Back in the day ALL computers came with BASIC. Is there anything out there that average joe can use as a SIMPLE programing language? Now that computers have 24 bit graphics, things could be a lot more fun to mess with.

Well what kind of programming are you talking about?
If you want to do simple web pages with some user interaction, use javascript, its pretty straight forward. But other wise java is pretty basic. If you need even more basic, you can use automator to do much of the tasks you might want automated for you, no interface there though, but drag and drop programming.

Want to program? Use REALbasic. While it's a professional-level environment, it's *much* easier to use than learning XCode. They have an academic version, too, which isn't expensive.

Can someone suggest a good programming book on Leopard (using XCode not that horrible REALbasic) that gets someone with programming knowledge caught up on Apple technologies?

Mike,

A really good book to get started for those beginning on OS X, but already know how to program is Aaron Hillegass' Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (2nd edition. 2004).

http://www.bignerdranch.com/products/cocoa1.shtml

This is getting a little out of date (more late Panther/early Tiger), but the fundamentals are there.

CW,

Apple's developer tools are available free of charge from the Apple Developer Connection. Go to adc.apple.com, create an account, and enjoy.

-jcr

The suggestion that BASIC is a professional level environment is hilariously ignorant. There is a damned good reason that even WIndows isn't written in BASIC.

What about VBScript?

@steve:

The statement that a professional program can be written in BASIC is in fact true, and there are many such programs.

Which is also to say that, in the same sense of professional, a great many non-professional programs have been written using the fastest possible, geewhiz-laden programming languages.

Don't confuse "professional" with "commercial" or with a requirement that code be as fast as possible.

A high-level interpretative programming language like BASIC is easy to learn and can introduce one to the basic principles of computer programming. Moreover, one can formulate and manage some pretty complex computations with BASIC.

I have an engineer friend who has created a suite of BASIC applications to handle computations and engineering design decisions in his special field. Some of his routines have been published and have been adopted by his colleagues, even in engineering textbooks. Isn't that professional?

The original question was about wanting a *simple* programming language. REALbasic is ideal for learning how to program. It's a modern, high-level, fully object-oriented language with an excellent IDE. While it has limitations and is not ideal for all projects, it's excellent for getting started with programming without all the overhead of learning XCode (which can take years). I prefer REALbasic for teaching programming to other languages because with RB you can create real stand-alone applications (unlike scripting languages) which can be distributed without requiring additional resources to run. (And with the Pro version you can even cross-compile your app for Linux and Windows.)

We shouldn't be debating about whether REALbasic creates "professional" or "commercial" quality applications. The truth is that it can. I know of RB apps that sell for thousands of dollars and they are incredible Mac apps (see Lightspeed from http://www.xsilva.com/ for an excellent example).

My advice: test out the free stuff like Apple's XCode and download the free REALbasic trial and see which you prefer. There's no harm in trying. But I suspect you'll find Cocoa a huge mountain of learning whereas with REALbasic you'll be writing your first application within minutes (try the tutorial which walks you through creating a little word processor).

Why people are comparing Xcode, an IDE, with REALBasic, a programming language?

Are you going to compare now Eclipse with C++ now ?

You guys are hilarious!

Me thinks that you are all missing the point!!! AND I mean ALL of you who have replied to the cw.

The simplest programming language available to anybody who is looking for one is YOUR OWN LANGUAGE, be it English, German, Arabic, Chinese whatever.

What complicates your language is lost in translation.

Translating the language that the computer that is your brain uses (bio-electric) to language that the PC uses (mechanical-electrical) is where the difficulty lies.

The degree of difficulty can best be described as how simple it is to code your language to the PC language in order that the PC can display an outcome that your electrical brain desires consistently without your brain having to perform the same complex problem over & over again.

So, what can you do if you want to program?

Answer. Learn the latest programming language or software and learn it well.

No shortcuts because this is one field in which you really do get what you PAYS FOR!!!!!

Drink Camel's Milk! Your Passion, Your farting!!!!!

Oh! And one more thing.

When average Joe's have lots more fun messing about with programming languages, the end result is usually code named WINDOWS VISTA!!!!!

Yeah develope software for al 100 mac users out there! lol

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

That last comment from sb portray's exactly what it is I was talking about. He has taken my comments as a compliment!!!!

Drink Camel's Milk sb! The fart you blow out will vapourize all the chairs in your office! you will fill relaxed & chilled but will later realize your mistake when you look for a chair to sit on!

Xcode, as shipped with Leopard, has tons and tons of bugs. Code sense does not work right. The code editors choose whether or not to open in separate windows all on their own. I am just glad Xcode compiles my code properly. When I used Jaguar's XCode some c++ projects could not compile correctly. I am keeping an eye on the ADC site hoping a patch will come out.

That said. Yes the tools are much slicker than previous versions of Xcode. The just need to fix them so they all work correctly.

Just my $0.02

If you want to get into Mac programming, shouldn't your first step be to learn Objective-C?

good grief. python.

I disagree with learning the latest language and learn it well.

The ONLY language that has survived the times and become increasingly powerful, portable, and still remains easy to learn, is BASIC. It is the best balance of everything.

There are C coders out there who will yell and scream about what I just wrote but they do not hold any candle to the machine language programmers when it comes to geekiness. The question is not who is the geekiest. The question is which language gets people productive fastest, most efficiently. And that is BASIC.

RealBASIC cannot be compared to the 8-bit or Z80 days (of actually Microsoft BASIC, the de facto standard at the time). RealBASIC is a fully multiplatform, COMPILED, and OBJECT ORIENTED language.

After years of wasted effort learning technologies, I warn others who will waste years of their lives in any niche category. ColdFusion? Pascal? Turing?

Aside from RealBASIC, the only other language I would recommend is Java.

The important thing is to be able to translate your IDEAS into programmed functionality. BASIC does that quickly and well. I have not seen a more powerful combo punch in all these years. Sure, VisualBASIC is powerful too but it is not multiplatform and is inherently unsafe.

Windows is going the way of the dodo. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just an idiot. The only platform of the future is going to be Linux, but in the meantime (say the next 10 to 20 years) Mac OS X will reign.

Hey Don't like REALbasic try FutureBASIC!
http://www.stazsoftware.com