Well, simple situation. I happen to be a software engineer who uses mostly Delphi and C# for software development. Delphi is great for desktop applications while C# is ideal combined with ASP.NET for web applications. However, I am considering to teach myself more about software development for the Mac. Xcode and Cocoa would be the environments to start with. Learning new languages is no problem for me!
However, before starting to write code on a Mac, I first need to buy one and they're reasonable expensive so buying one is a decision that will take me a few months before I know which one I need. So, to help me right now, I would like to know the possibilities that I have to learn more about Mac development without the need for a Mac! For example, does OS X work in a VMWare environment? Are the development tools also available for Windows?
Cross-platform Desktop App Development for Windows Mac Linux 4.1 (28 ratings) Course Ratings are calculated from individual students’ ratings and a variety of other signals, like age of rating and reliability, to ensure that they reflect course quality fairly and accurately. The Arduino IDE can be used on Windows, Linux (both 32 and 64 bits), and Mac OS X. Source Code Active development of the Arduino software is hosted by GitHub.
Is there a clear API overview of the OS X libraries? Or should I first buy a Mac, play with it for a few weeks and then decide on how to develop software for it?
In other words, should I start spending now, or in a few months?:-). Good Mac (or iPhone) software is an artisan product; it reflects the culture and tastes of Mac (or iPhone) users. Because the Mac is a premium platform, users tend to be more sensitive to the feel and polish of the apps. Thus to successfully program for the Mac/iPhone or even grok the Cocoa frameworks properly, you have to grok the Mac user experience.
Although many coming from the Windows or other-UNIX world try to skip this step, they do so at their own peril. So, as a Mac developer (who also writes for other UNIX OSes), my recommendation is buy a Mac and start using it, full time if you can. A Mac Mini is completely adequate for development and will set you back only a few hundered dollars, including the OS. Consider that on Windows, this is often less than the price of a full VS license.
Everything else (Xcode, libraries, etc.) are free. Once you have a Mac and begin to grok the feel of things, you'll discover that there are a number of development options. Besides the Cocoa frameworks-which can be used from Python (via the built-in PyObjC bridge), Ruby (via MacRuby or RubyCocoa)—-there are a number of other options. Qt from Nokia and Mono are viable. Often cross-platform apps written in Qt or Mono are disliked on the Mac because they don't feel 'native' (see above), but really the problem is not the framework. If you get the Mac user experience you can write a very passable Mac app in a cross platform framework.
You just have to intend to write a Mac app, not get a Windows app working on the Mac. You definitely want a Mac if you want to develop for the Mac.
Even Java requires local testing. That said, Macs are not very expensive and run Windows too. If you want to learn and start programming before you have a Mac, I recommend either Java or.NET, specifically Delphi Prism. See here my own first experiment with Delphi prism: You can write a program for Windows, keep GUI code and other code separate and later replace the Winforms GUI with a native Cocoa GUI on the Mac. I found that Pascal is a good language for accessing native APIs from.NET.
Everything looks cleaner than with C#, I think. The new version of Delphi Prism is coming out on the 25th, as far as I know.
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