Yet another cocoa without interface builder post

I am sure its been brought up before. I would like to know if its possible to write Cocoa apps without Xcode, Interface Builder, or NIB files in general; another words, write Cocoa programs programmatically using ONLY Objective C. Before you ask me why I would want to do such a thing and that I am crazy, please hear me out.
I come from a Win32 background, and my primary languages are C and C++. I am getting used to Objective C (though I wish I could use C++ to program in Cocoa). I picked up a copy of Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) by Aaron Hillegass, and have been trying to learn cocoa from it for the last few months. Basically, I am having big trouble wrapping my mind around cocoa via the very conceptual high level approach this book takes. I can not for the life of me begin to understand this whole making connections with interface builder.
I do NOT plan to write production applications in cocoa by hand, but if I could just write a few trivial applications in cocoa by hand without interface builder or nib files, perhaps when I do use interface builder, I won't have such a hard time understanding whats going on.
Thanks in advance for the help.

__mikem wrote:
I am sure its been brought up before.
I don't care. Your question isn't about learning how to program and learning via the iPhone SDK. I'll do anything I can for you
I would like to know if its possible to write Cocoa apps without Xcode, Interface Builder, or NIB files in general; another words, write Cocoa programs programmatically using ONLY Objective C.
Certainly. You can write command-line Cocoa apps. Xcode is just an IDE like Visual Studio.
Before you ask me why I would want to do such a thing and that I am crazy, please hear me out.
I come from a Win32 background, and my primary languages are C and C++. I am getting used to Objective C (though I wish I could use C++ to program in Cocoa). I picked up a copy of Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) by Aaron Hillegass, and have been trying to learn cocoa from it for the last few months. Basically, I am having big trouble wrapping my mind around cocoa via the very conceptual high level approach this book takes. I can not for the life of me begin to understand this whole making connections with interface builder.
You specifically asked to avoid the topic, but I'm sure there are several of us who are really tired of iPhone questions who would be happy to try our hand at explaining the User Interface architecture in Cocoa - if you want to try.
I do NOT plan to write production applications in cocoa by hand, but if I could just write a few trivial applications in cocoa by hand without interface builder or nib files, perhaps when I do use interface builder, I won't have such a hard time understanding whats going on.
You can write Objective-C programs using whatever editor and IDE/makefile you want. You can even work with all the non-UI parts of Cocoa to get a feel of how it works. Technically, you could write code using only Carbon and never use Objective-C, but that is really a dead-end.
A good idea might be start looking at doing writing MacOS X kernel extensions. You should still use Xcode, but only as an IDE. The code would all be C++ (or a subset thereof) with no user interface or NIB files. Realistically, that is probably harder than learning Interface Builder, but it is probably the most productive path available to you for developing MacOS X and avoiding Interface Builder.

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fidel-castro wrote:
I was able to follow the tutorial until there without problems but it looks like the Classes-Tab is gone in IB 3.x.
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Message was edited by: Bracer Jack

Hi Jack -
I think my best answer will be something of a disappointment, because I don't know how to show a one-to-one correspondence between the code you're working with and a Cocoa program. The main function of a Cocoa GUI program for OS X will look something like this:
#import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
return NSApplicationMain(argc, (const char **) argv);
As you commented, we could draw a correspondence between the first statements, but after that the functionality of the Cocoa program is going to be spread out in a way that makes for a rather tedious comparison. The only way I know to answer your question in less than 5000 words, is to skip ahead to one of several points in the startup sequence where the programmer can intervene with custom code.
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If I needed to develop a worst case scenario for this thread, the next question would be, "Ok sure, but your code still needs a nib to start up. I want to see a Cocoa GUI program that doesn't require any nib".
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Hope some of the above is helpful!
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