Why Gorm could never be done in C++
I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine whom I work with regarding C++ vs. Objective-C. I told him about GNUstep and also showed him Gorm. I explained the dynamic features of Objective-C and compared it to smalltalk and Java.
When I showed him some images of Gorm from the GS website I told him that Gorm could not be done in C++. He took some offense to this and immediately asked me "May I ask why you believe this couldn't be done?"
I explained that, it's because Gorm uses does several things which depend on the dynamic nature of Objective-C in order to do it's job. Here is a quick summary of the features of Objective-C which Gorm uses:
1) Categories - many categories, these are used in Gorm to do the following things
a) add the name of the inspector class for each type of inspector to the class itself so that it can be looked up easily. Mainly adding the extensions from the IBObjectAdditions.h protocol.
b) Also used for editors inspectors.
2) Loadable bundles - The palettes, which actually make up a large percentage of the code in Gorm are actually loadable bundles. These can be loaded when the application starts or during runtime.
3) Protocols - Many many protocols in Gorm. :)
4) Dynamic binding - As such, per #3, it's important to be able to call objects without knowing thier true class.
So far as I know C++ is incapable of doing #1, and is also incapable of #3 and #4. He went on to explain that it could be done in C++ if the modeller was a "code generator" to which I responded, but mine doesn't generate any code at all. :)
When I showed him some images of Gorm from the GS website I told him that Gorm could not be done in C++. He took some offense to this and immediately asked me "May I ask why you believe this couldn't be done?"
I explained that, it's because Gorm uses does several things which depend on the dynamic nature of Objective-C in order to do it's job. Here is a quick summary of the features of Objective-C which Gorm uses:
1) Categories - many categories, these are used in Gorm to do the following things
a) add the name of the inspector class for each type of inspector to the class itself so that it can be looked up easily. Mainly adding the extensions from the IBObjectAdditions.h protocol.
b) Also used for editors inspectors.
2) Loadable bundles - The palettes, which actually make up a large percentage of the code in Gorm are actually loadable bundles. These can be loaded when the application starts or during runtime.
3) Protocols - Many many protocols in Gorm. :)
4) Dynamic binding - As such, per #3, it's important to be able to call objects without knowing thier true class.
So far as I know C++ is incapable of doing #1, and is also incapable of #3 and #4. He went on to explain that it could be done in C++ if the modeller was a "code generator" to which I responded, but mine doesn't generate any code at all. :)
Comments
introspection, signals/slots and properties. Or alternatively you could also use a library which is able to gather meta-information from binaries and header files. AFAIK the latter has only been done for C, not for C++, though.
One thing to remember is, with Gorm you don't even have to recompile the object model, so gathering header files can't compete with Gorm's methods.
Gaining meta-information from the binaries (which I was told that it isn't possible with C++) could be a way to go, but as in my previous comment, I don't know if I should call it C++ and it sounds like a romantic dream to me. Not to mention that GTK's GObject can also do that as well.
For Thomas Zander, please try to understand tim's comment before you made such claims.