My effort to learn Cocoa development continues. When not napping or watching the Arsenal - Bolton Wanderers tie, I've been working my way through Apple's Cocoa objective-C tutorial.

So far I've been working with Interface Builder, which, at least in terms of ease-of-use, reminds me of HyperCard, the no longer supported development environment on which my employer based all of its rights management systems a decade ago, and with which I had to work when I first started there. Even though Interface Builder seems to do everything an interface developer could want, I can't shake the sense that it's not "real" development, as if only code that's typed counts. But that prejudice aside, Interface Builder is one slick development tool.

I said this yesterday, but it bears repeating: Apple does a great job of encouraging developers. Steve Ballmer can rant all he wants about developers, but with a free registration to the Apple Developer Connection and the tools that come with OS X, I have everything I need to do virtually any type of Mac development. OS X continues to me amaze with its ability to combine the best user experience with the best development platform. Leaving issues of quality aside, Microsoft would have to offer a copy of Visual Studio free with every copy of Windows before any thoughts of comparability could be entertained.