XNATools

If it wasn’t obvious from the last post, I got a new MacBook around Christmas last year. I bought it to do iPhone development, but of course I haven’t done much yet…I’ll get there eventually, though. Generally, I like the Mac; in most areas I like it much better than my PC’s. Programming-wise, though, it leaves a bit to be desired. XCode is generally ok – it takes some getting used to, having used Visual Studio for so long, but it isn’t too painful. What kills me, though, is the horrible documentation. If I want to know how to do something in Windows, I Google it and get a ton of results, some of which suck, but it’ll generally get me un-stuck. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work so well with the Mac.

Say I’ve done something using Win32 and want to find out what the equivalent set of API’s are on the Mac. Ask the Google…get back results explaining how to do the thing under Windows. Or people having the same question, with no answer given. Try searching for how to do that thing under BSD, and of course you get a ton of responses with Unix dweebs telling the person asking the question that they don’t know what they’re talking about, they don’t understand what they’re trying to do, etc. If I do eventually figure out what the proper API call is (ah! I have to use pthread_yield_np() instead of pthread_yield()!), of course the man page or the docs at Apple’s site do not provide the desired level of detail. The whole process takes so long that much of the time I just say “fuck it” and go back to the PC. Grr.

Eventually, though, I’m hopeful that I can break my Windows/Visual Studio addiction. You’ve gotta give it to Microsoft, they sure know how to hook developers early on…