Re: Intermediate Summary: Re: GNUstep.org website redesign proposal

[David Chisnall]

On 7 Jan 2014, at 09:23, Richard Frith-Macdonald <address@hidden> wrote:

> Good point ... I hadn't really considered the branding of the 
> language/runtime.
> 
> I agree that ARC is the killer feature.  The others are, IMO relatively minor 
> refinements not suitable to be the headline feature, or braindead/bloat in 
> some way (even though they have possible good applications).
> 
> However, I'm not sure that we can use the term ARC as a big selling point, 
> simply because I'm not sure people will understand how good a feature it is.

I think OS X / iOS developers will, given how much effort Apple has spent on 
selling it.  And people who remember life before ARC will know how painful it 
is to go back to the pre-ARC world[1].

> How can we brand the latest objc language/runtime so that it both sounds 
> impressive without being either too technical (arc) or too vague (modern)?
> 
> On the other hand, maybe calling it ObjectiveC-ARC is OK if OSX developers 
> all understand it?

I would say 'All of the latest Objective-C features, including ARC'.  People 
who know about ObjC will most likely be explicitly looking for ARC on the 
feature list, people who don't will just see the general point.  And it's brief 
enough to fit in a bullet point.

David

[1] On which note, I wonder if GNUstep is losing potential contributors by 
requiring code in the core libraries to use manual RR...

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