Re: People think we are for nostalgics or dead.

[Gustavo Tavares]

So GNUstep makes it pretty clear "The framework closely follows Apple's Cocoa APIs and is portable to a variety of platforms and architectures."

But what I would love—more than trying to play "catch-up" is to also sell people on the idea of Cocoa. "Switch from Apple" is a feature—not the reason to exist.

Like—why should you consider Cocoa when making an app? What is it that makes the framework great? Apple seems to longer care about Cocoa. At some point, Cocoa may even cease to exist. (e.g Swift / SwiftUI)

I think there is a case to be made for Cocoa—and that GNUstep could lead the charge in making people fall in love with Cocoa again.

What do I love most about Cocoa? You can actually read your code 6 months laters. The parameters are labeled appropriately—and many `selectors` are English phrases. Concepts are more important than saving a character here and there. I would go as far as to say that Cocoa is the most readable API of all.

So...what do you love about Cocoa?

Personally, I would love a section on the front page that makes it clear to Cnew devs (many of whom never have used Objectice-C or Cocoa) that "Hey, Cocoa is amazing. Try it. You'll want to use it forever." And we could make a separate page just rattling off the benefits. The framework needs and can be sold on its merits. Apple be dammed.

Ideas

- It is a faster building GUI toolset relative to C++

- It is easier to read

- You can drop down to C if needed

- You can stay in memory-safe Smalltalk as desired

- Any more??

PS — So...what do you love about Cocoa?

On Wed, Dec 22, 2021, at 7:52 AM, Gregory Casamento wrote:

Liam,

On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 6:43 AM Liam Proven <lproven@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 22 Dec 2021 at 12:21, Gregory Casamento

<greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:

>

> I have updated the website recently to show the themes.

>

> I am also posting, pretty much daily, about progress with GNUstep on twitter.  The best we can do is to try to put ourselves out there the way we really are.  Looking at GNUstep's stats on github tells the story that we are not dead.

>

> Also, the discussion on hackernews showed that a lot of people are turning around their opinions.   We will not change the general impression of the project in a day (or even a month or a year) but if we persist in making it known that we are not a bunch of Luddites, then people will, eventually, pick up on that.

>

> We must strive to change people's opinions.

What is the best way to suggest text changes, new content, new links

etc. for the website?

Right now the website is still hosted on CVS on savannah.org... (I know)... I am going to change this, but at the moment I need some assistance since there are some things in the hosting (at gandi.net) which complicate moving the site.  More on that in another email.

A strong argument for moving the site is that it is currently hosted on a very old machine.

There is a duplicate of the site at git@github.com:gnustep/gnustep-github-io.git (https://gnustep.github.io).  So, for now the best thing to do is to make suggestions here.  Once I get it moved, you can submit PRs.

 

Greg, since I note you now have your own Twitter account – @bheron

(and may I ask why that? Just curious) – then I suggest you, or the

community, or something, take your name off @gnustep and try to post

something on there every day.

That's a good idea.  Originally that was my intention, but it just became easier to post on @bheron.

www.bufferapp.com may be useful for this. I use a free account there

myself. You can put a load of stuff in, every day, and schedule when

it gets posted.

Ah, cool, I will check it out.

--

Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven

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--

Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
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