I made a rather bold statement about Cocoa being doomed. Here's some background on where it came from.
Apple and Microsoft are both working on next-generation app development platforms, with the goal of having one dev library for desktop, tablet, phone and anything else. Meanwhile, Mozilla also is working to extend WebAssembly from web to plain old CPUs. There may be others. Here's Microsoft's page on WinUI: https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/docs/roadmap.md It has details. Timelines. ETAs. Links to GitHub projects. C++ support. Places to give feedback. Backwards compatibility. All things that make life easier for developers. Meanwhile, here is Apple's dev page about SwiftUI: https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/ It sure looks pretty, but it's totally PR. The bit at the bottom presents SwiftUI as a mature and amazing technology for all Apple products (no desktop shown, but there's a laptop Mac). Simple past experience (i.e. cynicism) suggests that once there's a new tool, the old one is soon deprecated and eventually killed. It made things like the dearth of documentation and unchanged sample projects seem like foreshadowing. There's no timeline listed, but rumors are 2020 for ARM chips. That would be a good time for a SwiftUI pivot. If true, Cocoa is the new Carbon. We have to plan 5 or 10 years ahead, because it takes that long to create an app and sell it for long enough to get payback. Unfortunately, with Apple that means guessing the future from rumor and marketing hype. Even if I'm wrong on this, the uncertainty makes any further Cocoa development more risky. On the opposite side, the fact that MFC is still a valid part of the blueprint makes us more confident. It means we can keep using C++ as a respected part of the ecosystem, and gradually update the GUI when WinUI 3 is mature. I definitely do not mean to start a MS vs Apple flame war. Microsoft sucks in many, many ways. Their WinUI blueprint may change suddenly, or it may end up being awful. Apple and MS are both trillion-dollar companies that will do whatever it takes to grow even bigger. TurtleSoft is just an ant, trying not to be stomped by either of them. Casey McDermott TurtleSoft.com _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
