Thread

Programming Resource: NeXTSTEP 3.0 Programming Textbook

Programming Resource: NeXTSTEP 3.0 Programming Textbook Software 5 posts Jun 12, 2015 — Jun 19, 2015

#1 Sun, 14 Dec 2014 - 13:21

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1996_articles/jun96/passportalchemy.html

Alchemy sample-editing software for the Macintosh has been around for some years now, but after disappearing briefly (as if to gauge its popularity) it's had a facelift and staged a comeback. At least part of the reason for this new lease of life is Digidesign's decision to remove sampler support from its Sound Designer II software. Sound Designer II started out as a sample editor, and allowed you to transfer audio to and from a range of popular samplers, but has now been optimised for editing complete audio recordings rather than short audio samples. This has opened up a niche for Alchemy 3.0, which has been upgraded to support the most popular samplers currently available. I'll run through the new features first, before recapping on the basic package, and offering a few tips and hints on how to get the best from it.

#1 Fri, 12 Jun 2015 - 23:10

This isn't directly related to Classic Mac OS, but I figured that it seems like there's a fair amount of cross-over between NeXT-interested and Mac-interested people.

In looking for something being discussed on an IRC, I found (or re-found) this book, which is essentially a college textbook style tutorial on Objective C programming. It's less than $20 and probably worth the money if you want to get into OS X or *STEP programming and are starting from ground zero.

However, I also found that the author has made it available online (PDF, almost 5M).

I may have to find some of my installation stuff and get the development tools on my SparcStation Voyager and work through some of the tutorials. It also appears that old issues of NeXTWorld are available on his site.

#2 Sat, 13 Jun 2015 - 01:19

Haha, what a name - he's Simon AND Garfunkel! He also wrote the Unix Haters' Handbook, the prime choice of outdated rants on Unix.

#3 Sat, 13 Jun 2015 - 21:41

Must be a huge S&G fan.

One of my favorite Paul Simon songs is The Sounds of Silence (the less well-known acoustic version from their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M.).

Anyway, I will take a peek at that book and download the PDF. I've wanted to program for while now, but for some reason I find it difficult to get started, so I haven't really bothered (taking a programming class from a lousy instructor didn't help).

c

#4 Sun, 14 Jun 2015 - 02:22

I really don't recommend Objective-C. It's a hybrid of C and Smalltalk, and that gives you the burdens of both. Swift is actually really nice and Apple is backing it with full force. If you want something more universal, C#, JavaScript, and Python are all safe horses to bet on.

#5 Fri, 19 Jun 2015 - 01:35

Apple has a good "book" on Swift online and also from the iTunes Book Store which is probably what I'd start with if you don't have any NeXT stuff. It might be good to look through both, especially because the Garfinkel/Mahoney book is from when object-oriented programming was still fairly new.

C# has always been earlier for me personally, I don't have any book recommendations for that off the top of my head.

#6 Wed, 10 Oct 2001 - 14:39

I don't see the Emu-Sp12 on the list. Can anyone confirm if it is compatible with alchemy 3?

#7 Fri, 12 Oct 2001 - 19:28

Thank you! I greatly appreciate the clarification.

#8 Mon, 14 Jul 2008 - 17:16

Hi to all Alchemy Users.
i am trying to install Alchemy 3.0 on iMac G3 OS 9.2.2
hoping to use it with my EMU-SP1200 and AKAI S950
but Alchemy asks for floppy disks ..
how to properly install it?
thanks in advance