Ableton Forum

good for that and learning other programming lanuages, or is it better to have an pc for this sort of thing?

A new mac would be an excellent choice, as Mac OS X comes with an excellent set of free developer tools - so there's no need to spend extra money on e.g. Visual Studio.
Head to http://developer.apple.com/ for more info.

Hi os,

What a coincidence! I am wanting to do some c++ programming on my mac...I have visual c++ on my PC and had considered codewarrior for the mac... but its expensive. I found out you can get a C++ programming environment free from apple..I think from the same place you mentioned...is it any good? difficult to set up? do you know if I'll be able to create vst plugins using it?

Cheers for any help,

David

David...

the Apple Developer Tools CD ships with Mac OS X, but you can also download it from the site I mentioned. It's big though! 300MB of it, though you have the option of downloading in 10MB chunks. Very easy to install and use - it's a full GUI environment, debugger and everything.

One thing you can't do with it however is create VST plugins, apparently because VST plugins have to be in some old-style binary format, not the proper OS X format that the developer tools generate.

You can create AudioUnits though, which is one important reason I think Ableton should support them - to open things up to grassroots developers.

My AudioUnits (including source code) are at
http://www.collective.co.uk/expertsleepers/
and were all made with these free tools.

cheers,
os.

Hi Os,

Cheers for the info...shame about not being able to do vst's. Nevertheless I think I'll look into it for doing Audio Units. Saying that, 300 MB that would probably take me about 2 days constant to download...maybe I can order a disc or something.

I'm going to jump over to your site to check out your code for the audio units. I have done a couple of basic vst plugins, just some filters and a (quite poor) phaser. I'm kinda trying to learn dsp as a hobby just now...but damn its hard...I've just got a loan of a good maths book (god that sounds sad!) ...so hopefully that will help. The code for my phaser is avaiable from my site at www.david-e-ross.com , then go to the 'VST Effects' page.

Cheers Again,

David

I think ordering a disk is an option.

For code, try: http://www.musicdsp.org/

thanks for responding os, forgive my ignorance i'm a complete novice. so if I learn c++ and java on the power book with those tools you were suggesting will i be able to make programs for other platforms like windows or will they only work on my powerbook? and for some one who wants to claim someday that they are a software programmer as well as be efficient in such, exactly what are the languages that one should learn?

You can program for any language in Apple's free dev environment, not to mention that you can run many free unix development environments in OSX.

Also you can use Max or Codewarrior to make VSTs. Realbasic is also really cool for applications.

Making cross compatible apps (Mac and Win) is up to you, if you use Java or C++ or Realbasic, they can run on both. If you use Objective C, they can't.

Mac OS X is quickly becoming THE platform for developers, so I think you will be happy!

Not to mention that you can also run and test applications in windows using Virtual PC, which is more compatible than most PCs!

Anonymous wrote:thanks for responding os, forgive my ignorance i'm a complete novice. so if I learn c++ and java on the power book with those tools you were suggesting will i be able to make programs for other platforms like windows or will they only work on my powerbook? and for some one who wants to claim someday that they are a software programmer as well as be efficient in such, exactly what are the languages that one should learn?

Hi nameless guest...

It sounds like you want to become a professional software developer. If so then I think, yes, C++ and Java are pretty much the best things to get your teeth into.

Programming is a skill that transcends platforms (and languanges, really), so experience on the Mac platform isn't going to hold you up too much if you end up going for a job programming Windows. Some short-sighted employers might insist on specific experince, but a talented programmer will quickly be able to learn a new area, whereas a bad programmer who happens to know MFC is still a bad programmer...

To answer your specific question, Java programs should in theory be able to run on any machine. C++ stuff you do on the PowerBook will at least need to be recompiled on another machine and probably will need some changes to run elsewhere.

Best of luck!

Hi,


Kodama...you said "...you can use Max or Codewarrior to make VSTs" .. is that Max as in Max/Msp?

os...did you get my private message i sent back to you? my first time using it so I'm not sure if it worked right

Cheers

PS

See the line up for Namm and the Saturday Night Party ...man I wished I lived in LA..anyone know where to get cheap flight tickets...

Anonymous wrote:os...did you get my private message i sent back to you? my first time using it so I'm not sure if it worked right

nope!

Just sent you another message, hopefully this one should arrive,

Dav

got it, ta

Here's a link to a recent article that talks about the iBook as a development platform.

http://www.visionengineer.com/tech/ibook_page1.shtml

Yes you can make Mac/Win VST's and VSTi's on Mac OS X with CodeWarrior (C++), Reaktor 4, or Max/MSP.

You can compile applications for different platforms without actually running that platform.

And to the guy that said you're not a pro programmer unless you're on Windows????

He's a little off his nut....

I dare him to go post that to all the Linux, Unix, and OS X programmer geeks out there and see what he gets in reply!