RE: Do you program in Objective-C?

[Marshall, James A R]

Somewhere on the Swarm site there's a history of the development of Swarm
and the language selection issue is mentioned with the reasons why the
various options were discounted. Lots of languages were considered so I
expect Python was too.
I think that in the last week or two someone asked about a Python port and
Paul Johnson said some work had already been done on that by someone
somewhere?
        James

---
Dr James A R Marshall
Complex Systems Modelling Group (COSMIC)
Department of Earth Science and Engineering
Imperial College, London
Tel: +44 (0)20 7594 7493
Fax: +44 (0)20 7594 7444
Container World Project - http://www.ese.ic.ac.uk/research/containerworld/



-----Original Message-----
From: Willi Richert [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: 08 January 2003 10:40
To: address@hidden; Marshall, James A R;
'address@hidden'
Subject: Re: Do you program in Objective-C?


On Wednesday 08 January 2003 11:33, Marshall, James A R wrote:
> Willi,
>   I've used both over the past few years. Objective C is a nice way to
> program in Swarm, primarily because it is the original language for Swarm
> but also because it has some nice features that Java doesn't provide so
> easily, mainly to do with message passing and phased object creation.
>   On the other hand when I started using Objective C I found resources
like
> tutorials hard to find. Java is clearly much better in this regard
although
> Objective C may have more resources now since Max OS X is developed in it?
> Also using Java makes it easier to find a nice IDE, I'm not
> brave/masochistic enough to try emacs again.
>   I now use Java and I think the main frustration is it's not had time to
> shake down so thoroughly which can cause headaches during model
> development. I also find the Java interface to the Swarm libraries a bit
> messy compared to the Objective C version, mainly to do with putting in
> support for phased object creation I think. Other than that it's fine.
>       James

As it seems to me now the main point for objective c is this variable
binding 
at runtime and this message passing thing.

I wonder why the swarm team has not considered Python when they started 
programming swarm. Maybe because it is interpreted.

What do you think: If I manage to create a port for Python (like the Java 
one), would someone else would like to use it, or will it be too slow?

wr

-- 
.(sic!)nature

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