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Steve Jobs, NeXTSTEP, and early object-oriented programming (2016)

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107 points wmlive | 2 comments | 12 Nov 24 01:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source
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panick21_ ◴[12 Nov 24 23:43 UTC] No.42121263[source]▶
This is very narrow history. Basically a history that excludes everything that isn't Jobs walk to glory and perfection and domination. Ignore many important points, problems, accidents, alternatives and so on.

NeXT used 'Display Postscript' a display server that was basically a inferior copy of Sun's NeWS system. This was later changed because NeXT was to small and Adobe didn't want to support Display Postscript anymore. Sun of course killed NeWS because they wanted to be a 'standard'. Next didn't care about standards. They had less applications then CDE Unix, and far lower deployment in the 90s.

Objective C is one of many language that you could use to build UI libraries on top of some display system. Objective C wasn't the best or inherently better then many others. Objective C adoption by Next was kind of a historical accident based on office location.

Having something VM based for UI development isn't actually that much of an issue, when the hardware manufacture delivers the OS with the VM included. And usually it his the hardware manufacture that delivers the OS. And VM bases system can be integrated well with the core OS, object oriented or not. And that VM are inherently to slow is also questionable, specially for UI apps that can use C libraries and the Display Server for the most performance relevant stuff.

Apple itself had a very nice system for UI development on Dylan that was arguable better in many way then the Next system. But when Steve Jobs came and they had Next, that wasn't developed anymore.

What Jobs showed of in the late 90s wasn't exactly revolutionary stuff. But Jobs always presents everything as revolutionary.

IPhone development in 2010 working the same as Next development in 1990 is a sign of 'failure', not of success.

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1. WillAdams ◴[13 Nov 24 19:14 UTC] No.42128948[source]▶
What current development environment and language would you like to put forward as a successor to/alternative of NeXTstep?

Some notable applications done in it:

- Altsys Virtuoso --- this became Macromedia Freehand

- Lotus Improv --- cloned to become Quantrix Financial Modeler

- Doom notably was developed on NeXTstep and the WAD/level editor was never ported (though alternatives were later developed)

- Glenn Reid's PasteUp and TouchType --- two of the nicest apps for working with documents and type I ever had occasion to use

and a number of ports were done quite quickly and were arguably the best ever versions --- WordPerfect for NeXTstep was done in six weeks and FrameMaker on the NeXT stands out for an interface which I missed when using it on Mac or Windows.

In particular, I'd really like to have a successor to/replacement for Touchtype.app (and if that could be grown into a replacement for Macromedia Freehand, that would be great) --- what tool would allow developing this easily, and making press-ready files which perfectly match what is seen on-screen?

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2. WillAdams ◴[14 Nov 24 13:14 UTC] No.42135869[source]▶
A further example, TeXview.app was a very nice interface for editing TeX documents on NeXTstep, and has since been succeeded by TeXshop.app on Mac OS X and arguably even surpassed (it has many more features, and I can't recall any which are missing).

Graphical/integrated .tex editing environments are a frequently encountered application type, and there seems to be at least one for pretty much every programming environment --- I'm not aware of a graphical which has feature parity with TeXview.app and which is similarly consistent with its interface (it did win an Apple Design Award back in the day) --- if that's the case, then how can it be that developing with InterfaceBuilder and Objective-C and the NS-objects was so bad? If that's not the case, what development platform would you like to put forward which should have an even better TeX environment?