Writing Mac and iOS Apps Shouldn't Be So Difficult
13 days ago
- #Scripting Languages
- #Mac Development
- #Productivity
- UserLand Frontier was a Mac app from the '90s and early 2000s that combined a C kernel with a scripting system for app behavior.
- The app allowed for frictionless iteration—developers could edit scripts and see changes immediately without restarting the app.
- Frontier's scripting language and hash-table-based database made persistence easy, with automatic storage and retrieval of data.
- The app was highly productive, with developers rarely needing to interact with the kernel code directly.
- The author argues that modern Mac and iOS app development lacks similar efficiency, advocating for scripting languages and better iteration tools.
- Frontier's update system allowed for small, automatic updates without restarting the app, a feature the author finds lacking in current development environments.