Overreaction

Yesterday's post on Objective C being ha-rrrrrrd was an overreaction. I said I was in a bad mood and I was. I somewhat stand by what I said about it being slow going, but my attitude overall was defeatist. I have returned to Xcode today and had a much more enjoyable time. I wasn't really ready to throw in the towel.

Where i'm having the most trouble seems to be with memory management at the moment. Unlike the standard deep-end newbie that doesn't even know it's an issue, I've read perhaps too much on the topic, and consequently I keep guessing, wrongly it seems, where I need to be retaining.

I think I may need to reread that chapter...

The Awkward IE10

You have to wonder where Microsoft is coming from, dropping Vista support for Internet Explorer 10, when you consider:

1. Every competitive browser happily supports every Windows OS back to XP, and i'd suspect slightly beyond.

2. Vista and Windows 7 come from the same stable. This isn't a Windows 98 vs Windows XP scenario. You have to wonder exactly why Vista is incapable of running the software.

3. The generally accepted feeling, even by Microsoft, that Vista was a failure doesn't change the fact that many that bought a PC circa 2008 are still using Vista. Failure or not, it's out there.

If this is Microsoft's way of asking users to abandon Vista to stay up to date with web technology it's unlikely to work. Windows 7, after initially being priced competitively now costs just the same as previous versions did. Anyone still using Vista now isn't in any hurry to upgrade, nor do they likely have the technical inclination to do so. Should such as person call their £0 an hour friend or family designated IT support contact, that contact has two options:

1. Recommend upgrading to Windows 7. Friend or family member has to spend £80 reluctantly, which subconsciously becomes support contact's fault, plus support contact has to find an hour to install it.

2. Download and install Firefox or Chrome.

This support contact knows what this support contact would do.

I Guess I Never Understood Object Orientated Programming!

This is the only conclusion I can draw. I've talked before about years of using VBA rotting my brain and it's ever more evident.

Every little thing I try to accomplish in Objective C seems so incredibly hard and long winded I end up dejected at the sheer amount of code required to create anything worth creating.

I took courses of Object Oriented Programming ten years ago in Computer Science classes. It all seems so damn intuitive when you're learning how and why it works.

The problem is that in practice very little in OOP languages such as Java and Objective C is achieved with basic language constructs. Instead, there are thousands of often very useful methods with ridiculously long and descriptive names buried like gold in a multitude of classes and their instantiated objects. How anybody manages to memorise enough of them to program at any speed I'll never know.

Then there's the ambiguity of it all. Sure, there is a main() function in there somewhere, but once you strap UIKit for iOS development on top of this, understanding the flow is a minefield. I was actually getting closer to understanding that before the language basics started annoying me.

Importing. I think back to yesterday's language's use of include type statements. I recall having to be smart about it so as not to create circular references, as the files would literally be included by the compiler. In Objective C I feel like i'm importing every class header into every other class header, which if possible, seems largely pointless to require.

Naturally there are reasons behind some of these observations that better versed coders can easily explain away, but I really don't think there is an answer to my original point about methods. It does make coding a lot harder than I've become used to.

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that real programming isn't for me. I'm not enjoying this at all. I think what I enjoy about the VBA coding I do at work is being able to achieve results impressive to many with relatively little effort. This probably isn't a good thing either to think or admit.

On another topic, Tweetdeck on my old laptop is two rooms away and on that fucking instant setting and Leicester are getting shat on by Reading, hence a not distant enough chirp is burrowing into my OOP-angered brain every 3-5 seconds, tempting me to get a hammer. I just might.

I am, as you may have guessed, not in a good fucking mood.

The iOS Road to Nowhere

It's a few months since I decided to buy a Mac, learn Objective C and get to grips with the iOS SDK. I am NOT where I wanted to be with this.

It's not because I struggle with the Mac. I love the Mac. I'm converted. Done. Let's not even start.

It's not because I struggle with the language. Unlike many, I like it. I've been fucking around with VBA for the past 6 years. Almost any modern programming language is more intuitive.

It's not because I struggle to understand the iOS SDK. There's a hell of a lot more to it than i've looked at so far, but what I have looked at makes sense. Even brief dabbling in OpenGL seemed fairly intuitive. There's that word again. The short time I spent looking at the Android SDK last year was nothing like as enlightening.

It's because I have no idea what it is I want to create. The ideas I had flying around my head before now seem too primitive. I'm slightly more aware of the saturation factor now, but that's not all. I'm terrified, it would seem, of creating anything that might need to be supported by a web service. In my tiny mind i've decided I need to create something that sits within the confines of an iPhone that many people will want to play with and nets me beer money. My sober brain would likely attribute this to maximum profit at minimum cost, but it's a lot more limiting than it might seem. It is low risk, but then what isn't in my petrified existence? How could I ever bring myself to invest in something that might not work out?

I never expected to want to write bullshit apps similar to the far too famous iFart, and yet, even though I haven't yet found a todo/task list app that does what i'd like, I don't feel compelled to build one. I just figure I must be missing something... Somebody must have built what I want, and if they haven't, maybe i'm the only one that actually wants it. If that's the case it comes down to paying a $99 a year developer fee to use my own todo list.

The error i'm probably making is restricting myself to isolated apps. Another part of my tiny mind thinks that nothing is that hard to code - apart from graphics and complex algorithms.

Therein lies the problem. Everything good actually does have something spectacular behind it. Google has an algorithm. Facebook, as much as it might sometimes appear not to, has a fair amount going on under the hood. Soundhound/Shazam can match your dumb voice to real music. Angry Birds may be overrated, repetitive and not as unique as it's made out to be, but it was the first game to gain real traction of it's nature, even if we were tapping out angles to QBasic monkeys 17 years ago.

The above are [a selection of] the really impressive iOS apps. An app linked to a podcast that allows me to listen to episodes, listen live and call the show isn't doing anything impressive. Even something that tracks calories and weight loss falls short. A large number of apps in many varied cloaks are really only targeted note takers or gateways to existing web services.

All of this brings me no closer to knowing what it is I want to build. Several bloggers I respect a great deal don't put any stock in the "i just need an idea" mindset, and I can see why. It's too good an excuse to sit around making no progress. It could be that i'm fooling myself thinking i'm doing anything other than this. A few paragraphs of analysis doesn't change the fact that I'm not actively progressing my iOS app development endeavour.

As usual, don't expect me to resolve by the end of the post. I'm not a professional. That said, if anybody does read this and has any insight, it would be appreciated, though I will maintain my cloak of ridicule deflection by briefly referring to the fact that in over 5 years i've had less than 5 comments on this blog. A small part of me hopes at least a few more people have read it. Some of it makes good reading, even when I don't have a bottle of Jack sitting on the reassuringly sturdy arm of the couch.