Among my peer group, I’m considered something of a freak of nature: not really the coolest guy to be around, but handy to have when something goes wrong with a gadget. My sister was just joking with me about how I could take care of any problem that was gadget-related (and let’s face it, there’s no shortage of those!). Heck, she quipped, she could attach an iPod to a toilet, and I’d suddenly be imbued with the power to unclog it.

But there has always been one corner of the technological universe that has remained hidden from me: application development. I’ve burrowed fairly deeply into web application scripting, but this is a far cry from real, honest-to-goodness programming.

Nowhere is that more true than on the Macintosh. Programming the Mac is nothing like any other environment. The Mac makes use of an object-oriented language called Objective-C. And once you get your head around the rules of that language, you have to figure out the incredibly extensive Cocoa frameworks, which connect your instructions to actual operations on the system. Eyes glazed over yet? Yes, mine too.

But I have spent a lot of time in the past year knuckling down on this topic. I’ve pored through books, attended C4, and now, I’m in the later stages of developing my first actual Mac application. It’s a great time to be alive, isn’t it?

But it’s too early to tell you what it is. Instead, I’ll throw cryptic hints, like these two:

• The application’s code name is Quantum.
• It does stuff to your files.

I’m also working with a fine icon designer, Jordan Langille of One Toad Design, and I’m hoping that we’ll have a finished icon to show off in the near future!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.