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Maybe they just finally made it "official" or just updated the documentation (as seems to be the case online) but this doesn't strike me as "new news" entirely. I recall hearing similar way back when OS X 10.4 was released.

I could never understand why someone would want to write Cocoa in Java. The disjoint between them is enormous. Cocoa is Objective C. The language and its capabilities pervade the entire framework.

I tried to write a Cocoa app in Java, but it was like trying to saw a coconut in half with a butter knife.

Edited 2006-07-26 18:23

There are good applications using java and cocoa. Cyberduck for example. Now what does this move mean for those projects? Will it kill them? This would be too sad!

just my $.02 worth of thought.

kindest regards,
Moritz Angermann

And have people write their desktop apps in Mono instead...

Java looks fine and works well on mac. But still I use regularly Cyberduck for example which is a great app but you still feel the java 'power tax' when running it. It takes a few more seconds to load especially. When I started writing my first mac app I didn't know objective C and I really wanted to do it in java. Luckily the APIs I wanted to use where not available to java (Core Image).

After a few months I am glad I couldn't write it in java and had to learn ObjC (really not hard, I took much longer to learn about Cocoa APIs). In java it would probably have become unbearbly slow and the project would have been abandonned by now. That would especially be true for a graphically intensive app that has too launch in a snap.

The only thing holding me back to use ObjC is a proper memory allocation scheme. Will the Java programmers doing Cocoa at least be compensated this way?

I am sure updating both the Java version and ObjC version of the API is wasteful for Apple.

My proposal to Apple is: drop API doc support for java, but KEEP the java bindings.

Most programmers are astute enough and already have a nodding knowledge of ObjC (Especially those who know Smalltalk).

I would be perfectly happy to have to read the ObjC API docs, if only I could continue using the java bindings.

Obj-C is getting garbage collection, that's the compensation man gcc in 10.4 gives:

-fobjc-gc
Enable garbage collection (GC) for Objective-C objects. The
resulting binary can only be used on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and
later systems, due to additional functionality needed in the (NeXT)
Objective-C runtime.