Ask HN: How are Mac programmers different from Windows programmers?

Post by rchowe » Sun, Jan 09, 2011, 11:55 PM UTC

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #3

I think it's something of a faulty premise - both platforms have UI design guidelines (Ribbon interface, Chrome, etc...) - Apple's are more extensive IMHO, but that's a developer guidance issue and not a platform capability issue. I think the perception of comes from a bunch of legacy Win32 apps that are still lingering around which have the crusty old design. Newer apps made on Windows using WPF (Windows Presentatio…

Post by Aaronontheweb » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 12:49 AM UTC

rchowe wrote: post #11

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #3

I think it's something of a faulty premise - both platforms have UI design guidelines (Ribbon interface, Chrome, etc...) - Apple's are more extensive IMHO, but that's a developer guidance issue and not a platform capability issue. I think the perception of comes from a bunch of legacy Win32 apps that are still lingering around which have the crusty old design. Newer apps made on Windows using WPF (Windows Presentatio…

The thing about WPF apps is that none of visual studio, expression blend, or the zune client use a standard windows UI – cocoa makes it fairly easy to create an app that looks like xcode, and WPF seems that it makes it easy to style controls in a CSS fashion (I don't know; I haven't used it). I'd prefer consistency, even ugly consistency, over something nonstandard. Apple's gotten a little lax about this... see app s…

Post by foljs » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 1:27 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #4

maximilianburke wrote: post #2

I would think it's false, even with the surging popularity of Apple computers recently there are still far more people using Windows and far more developers writing Windows applications. With more applications being developed comes a much greater number of unreliable, slow applications with poor user interfaces. Though I wonder if the use of Objective-C, and lack of any safety scissors-esque programming environments…

Maybe this is a sign that I'm a Windows dev, but that app seems pretty cool. The screen is cluttered, but I must admit that I spent about five seconds looking at it, and I felt like I could jump right in and start using it. I just downloaded the command line and GUI version. Thanks! :-)

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 1:32 AM UTC

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #3

I think it's something of a faulty premise - both platforms have UI design guidelines (Ribbon interface, Chrome, etc...) - Apple's are more extensive IMHO, but that's a developer guidance issue and not a platform capability issue. I think the perception of comes from a bunch of legacy Win32 apps that are still lingering around which have the crusty old design. Newer apps made on Windows using WPF (Windows Presentatio…

Post by brudgers » Mon, Jan 10, 2011, 3:23 AM UTC

foljs wrote: post #16

brudgers wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "poor user interfaces " http://www.militaryfactory.com/cockpits/imgs/f16.jpg Interfaces designed for experts tend not to hide important information and high performance features. This Mac based product ( http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/ ) apparently doesn't allow search and replace operations at the same time as sequential numbering even though it almost certainly allows both.

> Interfaces designed for experts tend not to hide important information and high performance features. That you want "not to hide important information and high performance features" does not imply the interface has to be poorly designed. A well designed interface can accomplish both. Most interfaces "designed for experts" are poorly designed crap --and make the work of the "experts" needlessly hard. That some swear…