Objective C can really stink

Let me preface this by saying I am not a very good Objective C programmer. I come from a strong background in Java and enjoy Objective C becuase it's a new technology (for me) and it solves problems different from Java... well at least the API backed by Cocoa Touch solves them in a different way.

Coming from Java I will tell you this - Exception handling in Objective C is horrible! I've spent all morning dinking around trying to get a table view to display. I've been doing Objective C for 2 years now (not exclusively - but I'm not a complete newbie) so to be having problems with something this basic is pretty frustrating.

The problem really starts with me becoming more familiar with the language. As comfort levels increase I begin exploring how to solve things in slightly different ways... This is what happened today. I'm using a NavigationController to pop on a series of views (successfully until this morning).

I have this little block of boiler plate I toss around to pop a view on the NavController that looks like this:

NewViewController *vc = [[NewViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"NewViewController" bundle:nil];
NSArray *items = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"Item 1", @"Item 2", @"Item 3", nil];
[vc setItems:items];
[vc setTitle:@"Items"];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:vc animated:YES];
[vc release];
[items release];

Here is the logic behind the code -

1. Create a new view controller
2. Create a new list to slam into the table view for the view controller and pop it in
3. Set the items array into the view controller
4. push the view controller into the navigation controller
5. releace the memory for the view controller as it is now owned by the navigation controller
6. and release the array since it is now owned by the view controller

Even now just looking at the code I just figured out what the problem is - I'm not actually creating a new instance of the items array. So by releasing it - my new view controller crashes because it's retain call got mistakenly released by someone else.

Simple problem - no big deal at all. My frustration really is that the app just crashes without any type of error at all... just a *blip* application died... Occasionally it would spit out this error:

Program received signal: “EXC_BAD_ACCESS”.

Which is not helpful at all - basically that means we accessed memory that we shouldn't have.

I agree whole heartedly that this is not a problem with Objective C - it all comes from my ignorance and lack of experience - however, it is still very frustrating.

-A