Poll: Are you a developer/programmer?

[MacRumors]

Vote: Poll: Are you a developer/programmer? (http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=192&ref=forums.macrumors.com)

[woodsey]

What a boring poll :o

[kanaka]

I said I was a professional 'non-mac' developer, but that doesn't mean I program for Windows! I'm currently programming backend logic for a large website (mostly in Java), but of course anybody with a browser can indirectly use my code. I've also made a few shareware programs for Mac OS X. My most recent is an iTunes alarm clock... none of the existing mp3 alarm clocks did what I wanted, so I decided to roll my own! I threw my physical alarm clock away a year ago... waking up to your playlists is soooo much nicer!!

[robbieduncan]

Similar to the post above. I said Pro Non-Mac, but I am not a windows developer. I write code for a big bank that runs on Unix. But I also develop stuff for OSX in my spare time.

[farblue]

I write shed loads of code on my mac but I am not a 'Developer'. I am a researcher in Evolutionary Hardware and use my mac as a research platform. Of course, I also work with non-mac researchers so also write unix and (rarely) windows code as well as embedded firmware for the robots (in hc908, if you are really curious!).

However, I had to click hobby programmer because I am not developing a product or package and my code will never be released (well, maybe some of it but not much) to the public and the code is not the focus of my work, it is a tool.

Maybe an option like 'I regularily program on my mac as part of my job (but my job is not software development)'

This would include the thousands of AppleScript programmers who often only code as a means to making their (non IT) job easier.

[bbarnhart]

Windows developer by day, Mac user by night (and mornings). I don't write software on my Mac, but I've been thinking about doing some. Right now, I'm setting up a website and getting MySQL and PHP to work on my Mac.

[jg3]

Could also have used an option for student developers. I'm working full-time doing Perl/HTML and maybe MySQL this summer, but am usually not doing anything too serious during the school year. Part time seemed the best option. *shrug*

[springscansing]

Max/MSP counts... right? hehe

[Kid Red]

Sad to see so few mac developers compared to the rest of the field. I hope that number grows one day.

[eric_n_dfw]

Java & C/C++ programmer at work doing back end logic for large, travel web sites.

Actually, have been asked to debug/optimize an AppleScript application that our web designers use to build web site widgets as a favor, so maybe I am a Mac developer! (if I ever get time to look at it!)

I keep trying to get into OS X development, but never have time between Final Cut Pro stuff, going back to school (at 31 yrs old!!!) and chasing my 1 1/2 year old son around!

Implied that I voted non-mac programmer

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by woodsey
What a boring poll :o Actually, this one interests me more than most! :p

[cubist]

I'm struggling with Mac development in my spare time. It seems to me that right now it is kind of a mess.

I have Metrowerks' Code Warrior for OS X, which doesn't include a resource editor, and I have PB/IB. But project files written for earlier versions of Code Warrior don't work with the new version, conversion from classic to carbon is non-trivial and undocumented, and all the code examples are either very trivial (a single alert box) or don't work.

As for PB/IB, nothing from anyone else works at all. Why? Because PB's project files include entire directory tree paths. So unless your hard drive is the same name as the author's, it won't work. What a stupid design blunder! You can't even move your own projects to another folder. Plus PB's user interface is horrible, and error messages are incomprehensible.

I've been coding in C for 25 years now. I was able to get up to speed in OS/2 and Windows in much less time than with the Mac. I'm very disappointed.

[Snowy_River]

Part time. I, too, code for research purposes, so I can understand the want for an option for that. Perhaps there should be a method for commenting on polls before they start...


Originally posted by eric_n_dfw
... going back to school (at 31 yrs old!!!) and chasing my 1 1/2 year old son ...

Hey, congrats. I'm back at school at 30, and I have my three week old son taking up a significant portion of my time.

[wdlove]

I'm not a developer/programmer. I greatly enjoy the fruits of their labor! To anyone that does developer/programmer work, thank you. From this Mac Fan, you are appreciated! ;)

[erova]

flash/actionscript developer on a mac.

[macFanDave]

By day, I program CAD tools on Windows (although the code should be portable to the Unix version of the CAD package), but I am a part-time hobbyist Cocoa programmer by night.

I put that I am a pro non-Mac developer since that is what I spend the majority of the time doing (and make all the dough), but I want to let you know that I could have also cast a Mac hobbyist vote

[macdong]

Student developer, first learned Cocoa and PHP an year ago.
Have had 2 released applications and 1 PHP website.
Still lots to learn.
and i love to burn my brain cell :D

[macdong]

Originally posted by cubist
As for PB/IB, nothing from anyone else works at all. Why? Because PB's project files include entire directory tree paths. So unless your hard drive is the same name as the author's, it won't work. What a stupid design blunder! You can't even move your own projects to another folder. Plus PB's user interface is horrible, and error messages are incomprehensible.



I truly have no idea about what you are talking about.
Of course you can move your project around, all you need to do is trash the build folder and recompile your source.
PB's interface is no where near horrible, and i'd like to know why it is for you.
I do agree though the error messages can be somewhat more to the point.

[MacFan25]

I'm not a programmer/developer right now. But, it does seem interesting. I may want to do it sometime.

[kanaka]

Originally posted by cubist
I'm struggling with Mac development in my spare time. It seems to me that right now it is kind of a mess.

As for PB/IB, nothing from anyone else works at all. Why? Because PB's project files include entire directory tree paths. So unless your hard drive is the same name as the author's, it won't work. What a stupid design blunder! You can't even move your own projects to another folder. Plus PB's user interface is horrible, and error messages are incomprehensible.

As macdong said, I don't understand the problems you are having. I've worked on group projects in PB/IB and haven't had any trouble at all -- everybody can have a different file hierarchy view of the resources used in the project. I think the interface for Project Builder is great and very easy to use, and I love Interface Builder even more!

[Rower_CPU]

HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Flash - and none of it's in my job description! :eek: :rolleyes:

[voyagerd]

I'm taking programming courses at my school. I've taken 3 semesters of Begginigh and Intemidiate VisualBasic 6 programming. I only endured those courses so I could get into the Adavanced/AP (Java) programming course. Our schools programming website is here:

http://lo-cs.org/

[janey]

can't there be like a mac/windows developer option?!
i just selected mac-only because i like that platform better but i still occasionally have to write a windows app :rolleyes:

[jaykk]

i am a backend developer too. Java/C/C++, mainly under Windows/Unix. I started learning Cocoa a while back, didnt had much time lately to focus on that.

[springscansing]

Originally posted by übergeek
can't there be like a mac/windows developer option?!
i just selected mac-only because i like that platform better but i still occasionally have to write a windows app :rolleyes:

How can you be a professional mac developer if you are like 13?

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by woodsey
What a boring poll :o It may not have the thrills and excitement of the favorite color (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27444) thread, but I'm curious to see whether there a lot of programmers (like me) among MacRumorers. I've written programs in over 50 different programming languages but I only speak one natural language (English). So I'm a polygeek but a monoglot. I do mostly Unix programming.

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by macdong
I truly have no idea about what you are talking about.
Of course you can move your project around, all you need to do is trash the build folder and recompile your source.
PB's interface is no where near horrible, and i'd like to know why it is for you.
I do agree though the error messages can be somewhat more to the point.

Yup. It is in 99% of all cases a developer decision to use relative paths versus absolute paths (relative is the default for all but system libraries). The one exception is if you use an external script of makefile to build your code (somewhat necessary for cross-platform development!) in which case PB as of last December will not allow relative paths and must use absolute paths. I haven't seen any problem with drive names though; I share code with developers who are fond of renaming their hard drives and they have no problem compiling my PB projects nor I theirs ... so long as that makefile script sits at the same absolute location on the main HD ...

[bousozoku]

I've been programming since the early 1980s. One of my first programming projects was to wire together several integrated circuits in order to add a 4-bit number. :)

I went from there to IBM midframe programming and also programmed the famed Altair 8800. That was the machine Paul Allen and Bill Gates used to develop their version of BASIC.

While, I've done mostly business programming projects, I've worked with languages such as RPG/III, RPG/IV, COBOL, Pascal, C, and C++ as well as scripting languages, data definition languages, and screen definition languages.

Lately, I can claim HTML, JavaScript, and Java.

[wdlove]

Originally posted by bousozoku
I've been programming since the early 1980s. One of my first programming projects was to wire together several integrated circuits in order to add a 4-bit number. :)

I went from there to IBM midframe programming and also programmed the famed Altair 8800. That was the machine Paul Allen and Bill Gates used to develop their version of BASIC.

While, I've done mostly business programming projects, I've worked with languages such as RPG/III, RPG/IV, COBOL, Pascal, C, and C++ as well as scripting languages, data definition languages, and screen definition languages.

Lately, I can claim HTML, JavaScript, and Java.

What is your favorite and most enjoyable programming code? Ease fo progamming Apple vs. PC? What dp you dislike about Florida that you want to move to PA? I'm a native Buckeye. Are you interested in the East or West?

[jwthomp]

Just thought I'd add myself to the list.

I'm a professional Mac developer. Morning, noon, and night. :)

Left my previous job to start a Mac OS X based software business and loving every day!

CodeTek Studios, Inc.
http://www.codetek.com/

My personal site is http://www.everythingmacosx.com/

Cheers!

Jeff

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by wdlove
What is your favorite and most enjoyable programming code? Ease fo progamming Apple vs. PC? What dp you dislike about Florida that you want to move to PA? I'm a native Buckeye. Are you interested in the East or West?

Difficult and dangerous questions, these.

East or West--hemisphere, United States?

I miss Japan although I didn't live there long. It's the only place in the world where I've been that I feel normal. Philly is the best place for me in the U.S. I really like the east coast although San Fran bay area will be special as it was the first place I lived in the U.S. Florida is just too chaotic for me but I'm here now. I lived in Ohio for a while too. Lots of good food there.

Ease of programming? That is a loaded question. Before Carbon or Cocoa, I'd have to say Windows. Windows tools are far better, e.g. any programming environment from Borland. Cocoa is an excellent framework though and deserves strong respect. If Apple could tie its tools together in a more useful way and provide better, more complete documentation, I could say Macintosh easily.

I think my favourite, most enjoyable programming I've ever done is game programming in 6502 assembly on the Atari 8-bit computers. Nowadays, programming is easier but more difficult. Atari's 8-bit systems had such a well-designed architecture (hardware and software), that they were a joy.

[deejemon]

I consider myself a full-time Mac developer, but I don't write any code. I learned programming and was reasonably good at it, but I hated crunching code, particularly those times when what I was working on seemed so completely abstract and removed from the bigger picture of what was supposed to be accomplished.

My job is probably best described as a solutions developer, dealing with integration, configuration, deployment, etc. I periodically create AppleScripts or shell scripts as part of my projects, and still consider myself a developer, including maintaining an ADC membership.

[scem0]

I know a tiny bit of c++, but I am by no means a developer.

[mj_1903]

Currently unemployed so I wake up every morning to write projects and fall asleep doing it.

You will see a few make some ripples in the coming months.

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by deejemon
My job is probably best described as a solutions developer, dealing with integration, configuration, deployment, etc.We'd make a good team. I like designing programs, by myself or with a small team, and I like the nuts and bolts of coding and testing. Making the resulting product fit into the world is necessary but not my idea of fun.

[wdlove]

Originally posted by mj_1903
Currently unemployed so I wake up every morning to write projects and fall asleep doing it.

You will see a few make some ripples in the coming months.

What is it the your are predicting?

[jwthomp]

Originally posted by bousozoku
I think my favourite, most enjoyable programming I've ever done is game programming in 6502 assembly on the Atari 8-bit computers. Nowadays, programming is easier but more difficult. Atari's 8-bit systems had such a well-designed architecture (hardware and software), that they were a joy. [/B]

For a moment, I thought you were referring to the Atari 2600 specifically, which frightened me greatly. I don't know if you have ever done any programming for this extremely fun (only to play games on) piece of hardware, but the hardware architecture was anything but a joy to work with. Still, an interesting system to work with to learn how hardware designers dealt with problems designing console systems with extremely limited hardware.

I personally haven't developed for any of the Atari 8-bit computers, but seeing as I have one sitting in my garage I may just have to break it out for some fun one weekend. I have of course done my share of 6502 back in the "good ole days" of the Apple ][.

Cheers!

Jeff

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by jwthomp
For a moment, I thought you were referring to the Atari 2600 specifically, which frightened me greatly. I don't know if you have ever done any programming for this extremely fun (only to play games on) piece of hardware, but the hardware architecture was anything but a joy to work with. Still, an interesting system to work with to learn how hardware designers dealt with problems designing console systems with extremely limited hardware.

I personally haven't developed for any of the Atari 8-bit computers, but seeing as I have one sitting in my garage I may just have to break it out for some fun one weekend. I have of course done my share of 6502 back in the "good ole days" of the Apple ][.

Cheers!

Jeff

Well, while the VCS/2600 was technically a computer system, that wasn't on my list. How much could you do with 4K memory?

When the Atari 800 arrived in 1979, it had a graphics co-processor, DMA, ROM cartridge applications, and smart peripherals. It was quite advanced for the time. It also had an I/O architecture called Central I/O, which wasn't so different from UNIX streams. You could re-direct input and output just by changing the device name on opening the file. Hooking in a new device driver was no big deal either. Load the code, add the driver address and device name into the device table and you were done.

Of course, Jay Miner did the graphics chip set on those machines, as well as the VCS/2600 and the (Commodore) Amiga. Brilliant man.

[szark]

I miss programming for the Atari 800.

Playing with the display list to get custom graphics screens working, figuring out smooth scrolling -- those were the fun days. :)

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by bousozoku
Of course, Jay Miner did the graphics chip set on those machines, as well as the VCS/2600 and the (Commodore) Amiga. Brilliant man. Yes he was. Did you ever get to meet him? I did not, but read many interviews and was very saddend to hear of his death.

I worked for Commodore ever so briefly in the 90's and was disgusted at what that company did to his Amiga division. Too bad he didn't have an oportunity to team up with Jobs at NeXT or Apple - although I doubt he would work for a guy like Jobs.


(what was this topic again? :p )

[jwthomp]

Originally posted by eric_n_dfw
(what was this topic again? :p )

What a wonderful chip the 6502 was? :)

[bousozoku]

I never met Jeff Miner--I was always 5 minutes too late. I think he was the one person who didn't work at PARC whom I would have considered a hero.

The 6502 was a good processor. MOS Technologies did a good job and Motorola's support chips were great too. It was always funny to me that a 4 MHz 8-bit 6502 would outrun the big, bad 4.77 MHz 16-bit 8088 that the IBM PC had. Of course, you had to work harder to make things work on the 6502, but all of the addressing modes made it interesting and useful. I have an R65C02 and a WDC65802 in the drawer next to me. :) Can anyone tell me the advantage of the STZ opcode?