CODEWITHSUNDEEP
objective-cioscocoa
Git.Coach
Git.Coach

Reputation: 3092

Elegant ways to use Objective C while developing an iOs / OsX application?

I've been developing iOs and OsX applications for several months now and it still feels like I'm doing something wrong. I try to stick to the Guidelines and I try to use the objects Apple provides as often as I can. But it seems they are making my code very hard to understand.

Example:

When I want to just "increment" a NSNumber Object (which is not mutable, but you get what I mean), I use awkward lines like this:

int value = [counter intValue];
counter = [NSNumber numberWithInt:value +1];

Is this really necessary? Are there more elegant ways (i++, inc(i), etc) to do simple things like this? Especially when you're working with coordinates it gets really frustrating and hard to work with.

When working with Objective C I feel like I'm allocating, deallocating and converting objects all the time and wasting so much of my own time and the CPU time with all those conversions. Thanks for your time, I really appreciate your answers and I'm looking forward to your tipps!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 218

Answers (3)

Gargo
Gargo

Reputation: 704

You can write your category for NSNumber to implement the methods you need. For your example the file of category contains the following function:

-(NSNumber *)numberByAddingInt:(int)i
{
...
}

Include this file and then you can call it as:

counter = [counter numberByAddingInt:1];

Upvotes: 2

user529758
user529758

Reputation:

As @sosborn wrote: use objects only when it's required. But: when it's required, and you still feel wrong, simply don't. Write a macro for incrementing an NSNumber, use ARC for let the compiler do the memory management for you as efficiently as possible, etc. If you really worried about time, use C or assembly for time-critical tasks, or C++ if you want OO.

P. s.: NSNumber increment macro:

#define NSNUM_INC(n) do { n = [NSNumber numberWithInt:[n intValue] + 1]; } while (0);

Upvotes: 2

sosborn
sosborn

Reputation: 14694

Using your example, is there any particular reason you are using NSNumber for a counter? It would be much better to use int so that you can use value++.

The key to good Objective-C code is to use objects when they make sense. Don't be afraid to use non-object data types and don't be afraid to drop down (not the best term) to C when required.

Upvotes: 7

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