The Death of Cocoa
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The Death of Cocoa
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Re: The Death of Cocoa
#2"Apple is a company with a long view of technology. It's really difficult to tell whether a technology like JSON is going to stick, or if it's just another fad. Apple once released a framework for PubSub, which despite not being widely known or used, still has to be supported for the foreseeable future. Each technology is a gamble of engineering resources."
Apple doubted JSON would be around?
Re: The Death of Cocoa
#3"Apple is a company with a long view of technology. It's really difficult to tell whether a technology like JSON is going to stick, or if it's just another fad. Apple once released a framework for PubSub, which despite not being widely known or used, still has to be supported for the foreseeable future. Each technology is a gamble of engineering resources." Apple doubted JSON would be around?
For those wondering, what OP quoted was a response to the author:
> In defense of Apple, I once asked an engineer at a WWDC Lab why it took so long for iOS to support JSON. Their answer made a lot of sense.
However, I'm not sure that it makes much sense to me... I guess I may be missing something essential?
Re: The Death of Cocoa
#4"Apple is a company with a long view of technology. It's really difficult to tell whether a technology like JSON is going to stick, or if it's just another fad. Apple once released a framework for PubSub, which despite not being widely known or used, still has to be supported for the foreseeable future. Each technology is a gamble of engineering resources." Apple doubted JSON would be around?
JSON was invented (discovered ;) ) in 2001, the website went up in 2002. Major services like Google and Yahoo were providing their data in JSON format in 2006. If this article is correct, Apple didn't include JSON functionality in Cocoa until 2011, that's 9 years after the public website and 5 years after inclusion in major web services. This is an eternity in technology time. I personally find the explanation that "each technology is a gamble of engineering resources" in light of this a bit ridiculous.
As an aside, I think the lack of built in JSON support in Swift remains telling of Apple's simply puzzling take on this new programming language. When Apple first announced that Swift would be good for both "systems programming" and "scripting", it set off red flags in my mind. That statement is usually only made by people that have worked a majority in one of these domains, and doesn't really understand the other that well. In my mind, if the second you want to grab some data off the internet in the most popular format you either need to 1) drop down to a bridge API that everyone agrees is terrible (as mentioned in this article, NSJSONSerialization is even more frustrating with the optional stuff), 2) download a third party framework, or 3) learn monads or roll your own, then this does not feel like a scripting language by any stretch of the imagination. Just look at this: https://twitter.com/andy_matuschak/status/549268259871002624
Re: The Death of Cocoa
#5I'm in love with the Cocoa
Re: The Death of Cocoa
#6"Apple is a company with a long view of technology. It's really difficult to tell whether a technology like JSON is going to stick, or if it's just another fad. Apple once released a framework for PubSub, which despite not being widely known or used, still has to be supported for the foreseeable future. Each technology is a gamble of engineering resources." Apple doubted JSON would be around?
JSON was invented (discovered ;) ) in 2001, the website went up in 2002. Major services like Google and Yahoo were providing their data in JSON format in 2006. If this article is correct, Apple didn't include JSON functionality in Cocoa until 2011 , that's 9 years after the public website and 5 years after inclusion in major web services. This is an eternity in technology time. I personally find the explanation that…
> If this article is correct, Apple didn't include JSON functionality in Cocoa until 2011, that's 9 years after the public website and 5 years after inclusion in major web services.
JSON was added to Ruby stdlib in 1.9.2, released in August 2010. Available as a gem for years prior. Ruby was probably slow because YAML was the anointed format, and JSON isn't distinctly better than YAML.
JSON was added to Python modules in 2.6, which was released in October 2008. Likely available as an egg prior, but I don't remember.
There were Objective-C libraries for JSON well before 2011 too. The first one I remember using was in June or so of 2009.
So, I half agree with you. It might be hard to remember nowadays, but JSON wasn't universally seen as a Good Thing initially. It came with a lot of JavaScript baggage, which in some circles hung around for a loong time.
But Apple was definitely late to the JSON party, and it was disappointing at the time.
Re: The Death of Cocoa
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
JSON was invented (discovered ;) ) in 2001, the website went up in 2002. Major services like Google and Yahoo were providing their data in JSON format in 2006. If this article is correct, Apple didn't include JSON functionality in Cocoa until 2011 , that's 9 years after the public website and 5 years after inclusion in major web services. This is an eternity in technology time. I personally find the explanation that…
> If this article is correct, Apple didn't include JSON functionality in Cocoa until 2011, that's 9 years after the public website and 5 years after inclusion in major web services. JSON was added to Ruby stdlib in 1.9.2, released in August 2010. Available as a gem for years prior. Ruby was probably slow because YAML was the anointed format, and JSON isn't distinctly better than YAML. JSON was added to Python modules…
The biggest difference being that both Python and Ruby were module cultures, so saying that a gem existed actually means something. On the other hand, Mac dev didn't have Cocoapods until 2011. Apple dev at the time (and I'd argue in large part still today), was mainly using Apple's monolithic frameworks (and downloading AFNetworking source code to include in your project), so it was much more important for it to be included in the standard library. However, the point still stands that we now have a new language that still does not have this basic support.
Re: The Death of Cocoa
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If this article is correct, Apple didn't include JSON functionality in Cocoa until 2011, that's 9 years after the public website and 5 years after inclusion in major web services. JSON was added to Ruby stdlib in 1.9.2, released in August 2010. Available as a gem for years prior. Ruby was probably slow because YAML was the anointed format, and JSON isn't distinctly better than YAML. JSON was added to Python modules…
The biggest difference being that both Python and Ruby were module cultures, so saying that a gem existed actually means something. On the other hand, Mac dev didn't have Cocoapods until 2011. Apple dev at the time (and I'd argue in large part still today), was mainly using Apple's monolithic frameworks (and downloading AFNetworking source code to include in your project), so it was much more important for it to be i…
True, the ObjC culture was undeniably different than the CPAN-inspired code sharing cultures of Ruby and Python. So there were fewer quality libraries.
But the libraries did exist, and Apple devs in general came from a background of C and UNIX programming, where static libs weren't an oddity.
This is all different now, due to the huge influx of ObjC devs from the web world. Expectations have changed, CocoaPods emerged in response, etc.
But I have no explanation for the Swift situation, except that it looks and feels like ObjC and Cocoa. I think Mattt's point is that it needn't.
This might be a bit of C culture still showing through...any other conversion process would be, ultimately, magic. ObjC has never been about brevity or implicitness.
Re: The Death of Cocoa
#9"Apple is a company with a long view of technology. It's really difficult to tell whether a technology like JSON is going to stick, or if it's just another fad. Apple once released a framework for PubSub, which despite not being widely known or used, still has to be supported for the foreseeable future. Each technology is a gamble of engineering resources." Apple doubted JSON would be around?
JSON was invented (discovered ;) ) in 2001, the website went up in 2002. Major services like Google and Yahoo were providing their data in JSON format in 2006. If this article is correct, Apple didn't include JSON functionality in Cocoa until 2011 , that's 9 years after the public website and 5 years after inclusion in major web services. This is an eternity in technology time. I personally find the explanation that…
The NeXT/Apple ASCII encoding of their PLIST format is very similar to JSON and has been around forever. IIRC TextMate 1 made use of it for much of its bundle system.
Re: The Death of Cocoa
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
JSON was invented (discovered ;) ) in 2001, the website went up in 2002. Major services like Google and Yahoo were providing their data in JSON format in 2006. If this article is correct, Apple didn't include JSON functionality in Cocoa until 2011 , that's 9 years after the public website and 5 years after inclusion in major web services. This is an eternity in technology time. I personally find the explanation that…
The NeXT/Apple ASCII encoding of their PLIST format is very similar to JSON and has been around forever. IIRC TextMate 1 made use of it for much of its bundle system.
NeXT Plists were a lot like JSON, but OSX Plists were XML (or binary).
Apple definitely had their anointed interchange format, and it was not JSON, for several reasons -- first among them that Plists predate JavaScript! -- but also because JavaScript types get a bit ambiguous in a ObjC/Cocoa context.
Interestingly, Plists can now be XML or JSON (or binary).