Chapter 8. Mac OS X and Code

Up to this point, we've spent quite a bit of time buried in the weeds with user tools. To a large extent, we've ignored the fact that, aside from providing beautiful and functional user applications, Mac OS X is also a powerful development platform. Not onlyis Mac OS X loaded with the native Apple developer tools, including Xcode, but it's also very extensible using open source tools, such as Python, Perl, and PHP. A developer can create Cocoa applications native to Mac OS X, or use the Apple IDE to create tools that leverage the open source underpinnings of Mac OS X. It's also possible to add frameworks to the system that further extend the connections between these open source technologies and the native Apple development tools.

Mac OS X includes all the scripting tools you would expect in a Linux distribution. With Python, PHP, Perl, and Ruby, Mac OS X provides a powerful scripting platform, perfect for when full-blown object-oriented development is overkill. It's easy to create scripts that "do one thing and do it well." Apple also addresses this need in Mac OS X with AppleScript, a clean and easy-to-learn native scripting language.