Programing Mac Apps

[supanatral]

I'm looking to program a mac application to read from a central database. What language or program would you guys suggest?

 

[eric2006]

Cocoa is the best language to program in for current versions of OS X

http://developer.apple.com/cocoa/

 

[supanatral]

Thanks Eric. What's a good compiler for cocoa?

 

[eric2006]

I'm not really a programmer, but I know that you can use Apple's Xcode to program in Cocoa - http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/xcode/

It should be an install option on your OS X disks.

 

[supanatral]

Is Cocoa able to create *.dmg files?

 

[eric2006]

Disk Utility is used to create .dmgs. Refer to the Disk Utility documentation for information on how to do this.

 

[idhk]

) Cocoa is a framework it is not a language by itself.

Cocoa uses Objective-C, C++ and Java as of my knowledge

In Mac OSX, I think, you have two ways to program - one procedural way Carbon and one object-orientated framework which is Cocoa

Apple suggest we use Cocoa to program. Also if you make your app on Cocoa it would be able to be scriptable using AppleScript.

If you want to make simple command-line tools you can use ANSI C/C++

 

[idhk]

And yes you can create dmg images using it. You basically can do everything on the OS itself.

I made a simple program to interact with my mysql database on Cocoa. The only thing you need is the ODBS driver which is available in the official site and you are ready to roll.

 

[Mikuro]

Carbon apps can certainly be AppleScriptable. In fact, AppleScript predates Cocoa on the Mac by many years.

But as with many things, in Cocoa you can get some basic AppleScript support "for free".

 

[Viro]

Cocoa uses Objective-C, C++ and Java as of my knowledge

Cocoa does not use C++. You can access the Cocoa framework from Java and Objective-C, but that doesn't mean that the framework makes "use" of them. Cocoa is implemented using Objective-C and while there is a bridge to make it work in other languages like Java and C#, it's usually far more hassle than it is worth. The reason for this is because Cocoa makes heavy use of Objective-C constructs (like Categories) which have no real equivalent in other languages.

In Mac OSX, I think, you have two ways to program - one procedural way Carbon and one object-orientated framework which is Cocoa

In addition to that you can use:
- C++. There are many GUI libraries open to you, like Qt (not Quicktime) and wxWidgets.
- Python. Using bindings which allow you to use Qt, wxWidgets, and Carbon.
- REALBasic which is quite a nice application development suite, based on the BASIC language.
- C.

If you want to make simple command-line tools you can use ANSI C/C++

and Objective-C, Perl, Python, Java, and pretty much any language you can name, there is a compiler/interpreter for OS X.