bithead redux

So Nokia buys Symbian.

Compare and Contrast:

Windows Mobile, and the other flavors of Windows that run on mobile phones, descends from Windows CE, an operating system designed for PDAs and palm top devices.

Symbian, used by Nokia for there smart phones and other devices, descends from the OS used in Psion devices, which were PDAs and palm top devices.

When Apple chose an operating system to run on their iPhone, they chose OS X, an operating system designed for general computers.

Look at the differences in approach. Look at the hardware out there today — Gruber did a quick comparison and came to the conclusion that the hardware in an iPhone is roughly equivalent to the hardware in a circa 2000 PowerBook, which ran — wait for it — OS X.

So why not choose a software basis that gives you a headstart? Sure, you have to do some things differently, but it’s not like we’re back to the early ’80’s, counting instruction cycles to make sure we’re going to be fast enough to fit our code into the vertical blanking interrupt. Small system programming, these days, is roughly equivalent to big system programming, circa 2000.

I know which approach I like better.

• @dlpasco it was the great bacon storm of 2008 #
• ooh, now the mariners have fired McLaren. I wonder who we’re gonna end up with. #
• @mdhughes one problem I had with Java was being forced to handle the exceptions. I’ve seen much code with empty handlers as a result. #
• @mdhughes if I could somehow just be advised as to what could be thrown, life would be much less surprising. #
• @mdhughes no disagreement there. #

• I’m sad that Cyd Charisse died. Gonna have to watch “Singing in the Rain” again. #
• @schwa it crashes for me too. #
• @schwa and its MY code. #
• @schwa it’s fixed on my machine. dev code is a minefield. #
• @schwa the crowbar didn’t blend. #
• @schwa you mean people actually use that stuff? As far as I’m concerned, all the ISP does is supply me the equivalent of a dial tone. #

If you follow my twitter stream at all, you know I went to WWDC this year.

I’ve been wanting to go for years. I find it hard to control the enthusiasm I had for the experience.

It was a good challenge to get through. I was around very smart people. I was at a technical conference that actually gave me more interesting technical information than I could take in. I swear, stuff was bouncing off of my brain during the Friday sessions. I knew the stuff was important, I knew the whys and the hows, but the what’s just ricocheted right off of my grey matter.

One of the things that I really want to write about is that how I feel like I’m finally coming back home to Smalltalk. One by one the things I miss are being incorporated into Objective-C. ObjC 2.0 was cool, [redacted] is going to be better. It is unfortunate that the details that make me happy about [redacted] are covered by NDA.

Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL are mentioned on Apple’s public pages, so I can actually mention them. Grand Central Dispatch is tied directly to the technology I tried to allude to in the previous paragraph, so perhaps soon someone else will mention it and I can stop being annoyingly coy about it.

I still use languages like Python and Ruby, but I’m finding myself drawn more to coding directly in ObjC and Cocoa, or perhaps Nu. I’m in a period of my programming life that I want a language that can go really high level and really low level, sometimes in the space of the same method.

The best thing about WWDC08? It brought me back into a technical area that is new and vibrant, one that inspires real excitement for me. It’s almost like I’ve had to spend years trying to downplay the fact that deep down inside, I just prefer the way that Apple does things, and I have for a very long time.

It feels very good to come home.

• Wow. Back to work. No more escalator rides. And the code that I wrote late last week? It didn’t get any more magical over the weekend. #
• The Mariners fire the GM. About time. Now what about the rest? #
• @nuin we’ve been itching for a change. now let’s see if they have the guts to do all of it. #
• @schwa I could write you some bad code if you wanted. I have done some .Net stuff. #
• @SenorDanimal July 11 #
• @fraserspeirs I think there are going to be a lot of popular cheap toy apps for the iPhone. #
• one of the things I noticed about WWDC08 was no paper… The only people handing out paper were the guys with the flyers outside the venue. #

• what do yo mean the class isn’t KVC compliant? I have a property for that slot and everything! #
• and we return to fundamental rule. Do NOT ignore your compiler warnings. #

• At the seatac baggage claim. #
• WWDC was fantastic, but I really like being home. #
• @schwa I can’t sleep on planes either. You have my sympathies. #
• I am glad to be home. But now I have to mow the damn lawn. I’m strangely looking forward to that. #

• I’m starting to reach that wind-down stage #
• I just saw squeak running on an iPhone. #
• iPhone tips and tricks: best iPhone session at WWDC #
• WWDC gets a solid A for available power and network. I’ve never been to a conference that had better access to either. A+, even. #
• @schwa and we would enjoy taking compromising pictures of you while you slept. Perhaps Rixstep would post them. #

• I’m starting to reach that wind-down stage #
• I just saw squeak running on an iPhone. #
• iPhone tips and tricks: best iPhone session at WWDC #
• WWDC gets a solid A for available power and network. I’ve never been to a conference that had better access to either. A+, even. #
• @schwa and we would enjoy taking compromising pictures of you while you slept. Perhaps Rixstep would post them. #

• Brain is somewhat full. Reinstalling sdk beta 7. Maybe that will work. Maybe not. #
• @atomicbird that’s what I’m doing. Thanks for the nudge. #
• @atomicbird OS as well? #
• Sometimes you just have to crash. Tonight was one of those nights. #
• I have successfully bent beta 7 to my will. #
• can anyone connect to gmail smtp right now? Am I just borked? #
• Just had a really cool conversation with a Apress editor. #
• okay “AN” Apress editor. Guess I need an editor. #
• @dlpasco careful, sometimes they are armed assassins #