On Oct 5, 2008, at 11:01 AM, Michael Ash wrote:
Pardon me? Cocoa did perfectly fine for over a decade having this be the *only* way to do things. Bindings only came about in 10.3, practically yesterday. And some of us still aren't too convinced about their ultimate utility either. In any case, directly manipulating the user interface, while perhaps not as shiny and new as bindings, is *definitely* "Cocoa-like".
I agree with you 50% ... with respect to Quincy, this is questionable advice. The Target/Action mechanism in many cases is superior to the Key/Value Observation mechanism. The opposite is also true in many other cases. We need to be careful not to imply one approach is generally superior to the other when giving advice of this nature.
If you're new to Cocoa, I actually recommend learning to do everything with the target/action mechanism (not to mention notifications) before even considering KVC/KVO/Bindings. It makes understanding the 'WTFs' of Bindings so much easier. Not necessarily 'easy' but definitely 'much easier'.
I'll even assert that it's unlikely you'll be able to complete a moderate-to-complicated application without running into things that the bindings mechanism doesn't magically solve. There are lots of things that it most definitely does not. At least this is true for the present. Who knows what direction Apple is headed over the next few years.
I also think it's necessary to point out that all of the button- clicking, menu-invoking (via keyboard), etc. is done by target/action, even if all your collection management and editing actions are done using Cocoa Bindings and even Core Data, when your user says "save", it's the target/action mechanism that handles it. All that dragging and connecting in Interface Builder is setting up this very thing.
As to the other 50% of this sentiment, I don't understand the "some of us still aren't too convinced about their ultimate utility" comment. By "ultimate utility", I take it that you mean some view the Bindings mechanism as trivial and not particularly useful. If I'm wrong, please correct, but if I'm right, I strongly disagree. Bindings was, by popular belief, of limited utility in 10.3 (mostly because of weaknesses/inflexibilities in the controller layer with a handful of unsavory work-arounds), but the underlying technologies (KVC/KVO) have been a powerful, flexible, modern addition to the Cocoa frameworks and continue to grow with each new OS release. We'll call 10.4's NSTreeController a ... valiant first-draft. :-)
Of course all this is my opinion, not canon, so no religious wars are intended. :-) In fact, though I have a good grasp on "Bindings" (as an umbrella term for KVC/KVO as well), I still struggle to use them creatively (that is, beyond the typical documentation and tutorial examples). I'm only starting to grasp the true potential of the technology (and dreaming of a few custom NSObjectController subclasses to handle some special cases I'm faced with). So there's my disclaimer and your license to label me wrong. :-)
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