Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Interview on Daring Fireball

I had the honor of being interviewed for John Gruber’s site.

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I've been playing around with SpamSieve 1.x after Mailsmith 2.0 came out. I was about to cough up the cash when I found out about POPFile. The thing that convinced me of POPFile was the fact that it allowed for more than just differentiation between Spam and Ham. It's absolutely amazing what you can do with it, and it allowed me to get rid of about 90& of my filters. It will even automatically identify personal mail from people who have never mailed me and put it into the correct folder.

So basically, what I'm trying to say is: Implement multiple buckets, and I'll be back and finally give you my cash! ;-)

By the way, in the interview, you mention that you view Java as a sidestep from Objective-C. A few lines down, you then say that one of the things that intrigue you about scripting languages is that you don't have to manage memory yourself. Personally, I think that's the main difference between Java and Objective-C if you look at just the languages themselve: Java has a very good garbage collector. I wish Objective-C offered something similar.

I'm thinking about multiple-buckets. E-mail me if you want to beta test.

Garbage collection (and the related typesafety) is certainly one of Java's strong points. I also like the way it does packages and exceptions. However, there are also things I like better about Objective-C: Smalltalk-style syntax, dynamism, macros, easy interoperability with C and C++.

In most cases, I don't think Java ends up being a win for Cocoa development. If I'm going to use a second-class language, why not a scripting language that has the same benefits as Java, plus greater expressiveness?

BTW, the GNU version of Objective-C can work with the Boehm conservative garbage collector.

I certainly wouldn't advocate Java for most Cocoa development, either. If you really love Java and don't want to learn another language, it's great that it's available, but personally, I don't use Java in Cocoa. I'm just saying that Java does have some advantages over Objective-C, and I think that, while it has its fair share of problems, Java is a really great language to develop in.

It gives the developer a lot of power while helping him avoid common mistakes. And apps run on a wide range of systems.

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