REALBasic: TDG, 2nd Edition

Appendix A. Growing an Application

The first edition of this book lacked many extras, which, however much I would have liked to include them, were barred by limitations of size and time. Exercises, quizzes, a section on teaching REALbasic to children would all have been nice. But my saddest omission was a reasoned exposition of the entire thought process for the complete development, from start to finish, of an actual application. And readers have told me that they particularly missed this as well. So, in this appendix, I write an entire application—with you, the reader, looking over my shoulder.

What’s presented here is just a sample of how I think and work; I don’t imagine that this is the only way to think and work, or that it is how you should think and work. Nevertheless, I have learned from years of classroom teaching that the most useful service the teacher can perform for the student is to expose, with candor and clarity, the workings of his or her own mind. Mere facts can be gleaned from any decent reference; simple deductive logic is a matter of practice; ideas are the province of everyone; but the teacher’s contribution is a particular way of approaching facts, of applying logic, of manipulating and evaluating ideas.

Principles of Approach

Since my way of working may not suit everyone, I should say something at the outset about what that way is. In general, I have found the following to be useful principles:

• Be as object-oriented as you can. The more your logic is a product ...