Re: Problem with Obj-C was Anybody try CodeWarrior for Linux?

[Jan Kreft]

Hi,

I'd like to make two comments here.

1. I tink you have a wrong idea about the time you spend
programming/debugging when you produce a simulation. My personal estimate
is 20% of the time it took from starting the project and publishing it was
programming/debugging. The "rest" was model design, searching the
literature for parameters etc., analysing the results, and writing it up.
Ergo, although I'm a terribly inefficient programmer, it doesn't matter a
lot. Being able to type twice as fast would have a much higher impact.

2. Learning Objective-C is a piece of cake if you know C. If you know
other languages as well, it's even easier. Learning the standard tools
also takes time. With your general programming knowledge, I reckon it
takes one month to learn the specific stuff, i.e. 
Swarm/Objective-C/gcc/gdb/emacs, good enough to start being productive. I
had to learn C and Unix as well (now no longer necessary), that's another
month each. 

Besides, learning is interesting.

Regards, Jan.

On Wed, 23 Jun 1999, Steven I . Citron-Pousty wrote:

> Dear swarm users:
> As an almost swarm user I would really like to comment on this thread.
> The reason I am not using swarm is bc of the lack of a non-friendly
> IDE/programming environment and the use of a almost dead programming
> language (I use almost dead for lack of a better term, you have to admit
> _not many_ courses/web sites/learning experiences are out there for
> Obj-C.
> I know these complaints sounds wimpy but it is true. I have a lot of
> others things to focus on in my research other than learning yet another
> programming language and how to interpret the gobldy gook that comes out
> of GDB. I consider myself a somewhat computer savy ecologist, I attended
> a Santa Fe Summer school where I got to work with the Swarm people, I
> can program in some languages and I am mostly self-taught, but with all
> this, Swarm is still out of the question for me right now.
> I am not the only one in my dept who has been turned off by the
> learning/implementation curve for swarm. If SWARM is ever to be accepted
> as a "standard" set of tools for individual -based simulations, which I
> think is a great idea, it has to be done in a language and environment
> thats friendlier to people without an Elect. Engin. degree or without
> the time to spend several months learning SWARM/GCC/GDB (if they can do
> this on their own). This JAVA implementation sounds great, but Marcus's
> letter is disheartening.
> 
> >The goal we have is to make Swarm interfaces available to popular Java
> IDEs.9
> >This goal will be facilitated, but not acheived, with the 2.0 release
> >of Swarm.
> 
> >First of all, Swarm interfaces need to be declared as `Java Beans'.
> >Secondly, for Windows users, the Cygwin DLL that we use has problems
> being
> >embedded in non-Cygwin environments.
> 
> By making the decision to only using GNU/Free products you have made the
> learning curve past the reach of people who would really like to use the
> product. There are several low cost, especially for academic users,
> nicer front ends for programming in object-oriented languages.
> I guess I should stop complaining now. Feel free to flame me as you wish
> but all this whining is bc I think the SWARM project is a great idea and
> I would really like to be involved.
> Thanks for listening...
> Steve
> 
> 
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