Programming

[prog]

To answer a question I posed myself earlier on here: Chuck doesn't want the book to go very deep into Mac OS X programming. There will be a chapter all about software development, but it won't contain a complete reference to Objective-C, or anything like that. It will instead examine the whole developer's toolbox in varying levels of detail (things like Project Builder, the big IDE, will receive much more attention than Pixie, the magnifying glass utility).

I look forward to the chance of writing my own "Getting Started with OS X programming" section, since I haven't found anything in any format that clearly states what you need to learn before you can dive into the Cocoa API or whatnot -- I've been picking this up instead through inference and interviewing friends with more experience here than me.

---

Linda would have separated the above sentence into two, splitting it at the emdash. She'd call it a run-on sentence, a label with which I don't agree; I learned run-ons as independent clauses incorrectly joined, such as "This is a run-on, it has no coordinating conjunction." But she does mean it to say that, stylistically, it runs on and on and on. I say in my defense that I picked up my penchant for ungodly long sentences from the best writing course I have ever taken, taught by a prof who made you fight with tooth and nail for any paper grade higher than 'D'. He loved and rewarded using the active voice as much as possible, and he felt similarly about sentences possessing a sinister and labyrinthine nature. Having dependence on weak verbs knocked out of me undoubtedly proved a Good Thing, but perhaps I should question that other effect.

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

In that case, the em dash works almost like a semicolon. Of course, blog writing and writing for publication are two very different species (quick check to verify that the plural of 'species' is indeed 'species') of monkey.

[leahleaf.livejournal.com]

the second paragraph made me laugh and laugh because I thought you were addressing the topic at hand by deliberately lengthening your sentences. then I realized that it really *is* how you write all the time and it was not as funny. NOT FUNNY AT ALL.

that being said, I tend to run long in the sentence. I find it more aggravating than anything else: I can't tell a simple story in a punchy enough fashion to be consistently entertaining! I blame my father for this, as we both tend to get carried away by the words and drift from the narrative core. so sad.