I just spent what seems like an inordinate amount of time getting an NSTableView to work exactly the way I wanted it to. This page was a good reference, even though it’s a few years old. And thank god for Stack Overflow. I have the feeling that I’ve cobbled something together that a serious Mac developer would laugh at, but it does work, so I’m happy.
Author: Andrew Huey
Mercurial and Git with Xcode 4
I’ve been reading up a bit more on Xcode 4. The prior version, Xcode 3, had SCM integration with Subversion, Perforce, and CVS. The new version has support for Subversion and Git. (I’m not sure if they dropped CVS and Perforce, but I’ve only seen Subversion and Git mentioned.) And, of course, I decided a couple of weeks ago to use Mercurial instead of Git. Oh well. It’s not a big deal to do version control outside of the IDE, but it’s always nice to have it integrated.
I think I’ll be sticking with Mercurial anyway, since Bitbucket allows unlimited private repositories under their free plan, while Github doesn’t.
XCode 4
I was surprised to read that Apple released Xcode 4 today. Usually, I’d know about something like this in advance, but I seem to have missed this entirely.
I’ve been doing a lot of work in Xcode over the last few weeks, trying to learn Cocoa programming, and working on a small contract job, rewriting an old OS 9 FutureBasic app.
I’m a little disappointed to see that they’re charging $5 for it now. That’s not much, compared to, say Visual Studio 2010 Professional
I think I’m going to stick with Xcode 3 for now, since I need to get this project done, and all my reference material right now is oriented towards Xcode 3. Once I’m done with the current project though, I’ll probably download and install Xcode 4. I’m not sure how I feel about the switch to a single-window interface, but I like the fact that Interface Builder will no longer be a separate program, and it looks like they’ve made a number of other cool little improvements.
progress on Cocoa programming
I’m making some progress, working my way through the Cocoa Programming book that I’m reading right now. I’m including a screenshot from Bitbucket below, showing my check-ins over the last week. I have also started working on the actual Cocoa project that I’m supposed to be working on. I haven’t gotten very far with it, though. Messing with Cocoa has made me realize how proficient I’ve gotten with .Net programming over the last few years. In Cocoa, I’m struggling with stuff that I could do in .Net in my sleep.
Also, I’m realizing that .Net is a much more programmer-friendly environment that Cocoa and Objective-C. I’m not looking to start any language/framework wars, but there are a lot of things that are much easier to do in C# than in Objective-C. And wiring up a GUI for a Windows Forms app is a lot easier than creating a desktop Cocoa app.
fun with Mercurial
As I’ve been working my way through Cocoa Programming, I’ve been checking in my source code, using MacHg and Bitbucket, at the end of every chapter. One nice side-effect of this is that I can easily see my progress in the book. Here’s a screenshot from MacHg:
and here’s one from Bitbucket:
Mercurial
I’ve been doing a bit of work in my spare time to try to learn Objective-C and Cocoa programming for the Mac. I got sidetracked from that a bit today to explore Mercurial. I’ve been meaning to try out some of the newer version control systems, like Git and Mercurial, but just hadn’t gotten around to it. The Mac programming stuff seemed like a good excuse to set up a test environment, and get my “Hello world” exercises under version control.
I set up an account at Bitbucket today, installed MacHg on my MacBook, and started messing around. I had a few false starts, and did a few things wrong, but I think I now have things configured so that I can track my work in a local repository, and push it up to Bitbucket whenever I want.
I was attracted to Bitbucket largely because it’s run by Atlassian. I used JIRA at my last job, and like it a lot. My Bitbucket account was pretty easy to set up. It’s got a nice interface for browsing your source files, and looking at changesets. And it’s got an issue tracker and wiki built in.
And I decided on MacHg on the client side, largely because of some recommendations I saw on Stackoverflow, and a couple of other places. It took me a little while to get used to the interface, but now that I understand it, it’s pretty easy to use.
xcode project template grief
I’m trying to learn a bit of Mac programming right now. I’m using Cocoa Programming: A Quick-Start Guide for Developers, which is turning out to be a pretty good book so far. I just stumbled across an issue with my XCode install though. It’s pretty well explained here and here. Having fixed that problem, I am apparently ready to write a Hello World program. Joy!
I should probably just clear out my “/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project Templates” folder, and maybe a few other folders, and do a clean XCode install. But I know that will take some time, so I’m going to put that off. for now.
Amazon Streaming Video
Can Amazon push Netflix out of limelight? | Media Maverick – CNET News — I would be all over this, if only it ran on one of my existing boxes (Wii, PS3, or Apple TV).
Borders Stores Closing
I don’t see my local Borders on this store closing list. I buy most of my books at Amazon these days, but it’s nice to have a bookstore where I can go to browse through actual, physical, books, on actual shelves.
Around here, we’ve got one Borders and one Barnes & Noble, and not much else. In Somerville, we used to have one small bookstore for new books, and two used book stores. They’re all gone now, though I think one of the used book stores just moved to a different town.
I do hope Borders survives. I try and buy stuff there once in a while, even if it’s more expensive than Amazon, just to help keep them afloat.
Verizon iPhone thoughts
I’ve had my Verizon iPhone for a few days now. I’m mostly liking it, but I admit I miss a few things about my BlackBerry.
Stuff I like about the iPhone:
- I haven’t had to reboot it. (I used to have to reboot the BB almost every day.)
- Lots of apps. (I had just a handful of apps on the BB. The way memory worked in the older BB OS, you just couldn’t install too many apps.)
- Much better web browser.
- No more need for Missing Sync.
Stuff I miss from the BlackBerry Storm:
- Dedicated camera button on the right side.
- User-assignable button on the left side. (I had it assigned to QuickLaunch, which I also miss.)
- Ability to star a GMail message right in the native mail app (via the enhanced GMail plugin).
- SurePress. I know most reviewers weren’t keen on it, but I kind of liked it.