The Logic Off Topic list

On a fine day, 10-11-2003, dave wrote:

>I have never programmed a computer in my life...
>
>I would love to make a couple of basic OSX programmes...
>
>I would love to learn to make
>1) a program for time mgmt in OSX
>2) some programs for teaching music to kids.
>
>How do i learn the programming basics - where can i start my
>reading/learning?
>Anybody got any advice?

Woh... that's quite the question...  I honestly wouldn't know where 
to start -- it's been so long since I first started programming, that 
the resources I used then would be totally useless nowadays.

One things to be aware of is that no matter which environment you 
pick, be it hardcore assembler or some cute & friendly drag & drop & 
add-code environment, learning to write a proper non-trivial program 
is going to take *very much time*.  Not something you do on a late 
Sunday evening.  Please do not underestimate the effort involved in 
coming to grips with basic concepts such as event-flow, 
control-loops, input/output handling, etcetera.

That being said, I think that nowadays I would recommend a 
programming environment such as RealBasic.  I honestly think it 
doesn't get any easier than this.  You create a new window, and drag 
& drop a button and a textfield into it.  Double-click the button, 
and a window opens in which you can enter code for the event 
"button_clicked".  So you can start typing something like
   MainWindow.close
   MsgBox MyTextField.text
I.e. when the button is clicked, the window called MainWindow will be 
closed.  Next a message-box will be shown displaying the text that 
was entered in the text-field which you'd called MyTextField.
Compile the program, and you have your first mac-programm running -- 
including an automatic menu with Quit option (always handy :), and an 
Edit menu with functioning cut/copy/paste commands, so that you can 
paste text from the clipboard into the text field for example.

This is of course an example whose simplicity doesn't do justice to 
the complexity of programming in general, but at least you'll get an 
idea of the methodology of writing a program in RealBasic.  No 
worries about linking files and libraries and including headers and 
stuff (all of which you'll run into when programming in C/C++). 
RealBasic gives lots of functionality "for free".

The drawback is that since it's a relatively "high level" 
environment, you're screwed if the environment hasn't implemented 
something you want to do.  Example: RealBasic for OSX has no means of 
using the CoreMIDI routines, which simply means you can't do any 
midi-stuff at all (which sucks indeed).  It is possible to extend 
RealBasic's functionality with 3rd party plug-ins (written in C/C++), 
but no CoreMIDI plug-in has been written yet... (the same lack of 
midi-support holds for OS9, but at least there's a 3rd party OS9 
plug-in that lets you use OMS).

I know this doesn't answer your literal question, but... well, at 
least it might give you some ideas about which directions you might 
want to explore further.  BTW, the RealBasic website is at 
http://www.realsoftware.com/.



-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra   h @ k n o w a r e . n l
Omega Art: http://www.omega-art.com/