I would need to find out how long it would take to code a couple of things. They happen to be running on a Mac and they would be dealing with moving images. Quicktime comes to mind. It is an OK player. Sure VLC is more flexible for some formats, but everybody has a Quicktime player on a Mac. SideNote: Why is apple so stupid to charge money for they pro Version of Quicktime? Can’t make revenue that would make up for the general annoyance that comes with it. And you don’t become a standard for charging for features like copy paste. Anyhow.
Quicktime development is a whole different nightmare. There are around 2,500 functions. Countless API options. Countless related technologies, and not a single introduction that would make any sense, or compile for that matter. Of course, it’s all there. And ‘all’ is quet literally. Examples that crash XCode. Examples that only run on OS9. Introductions of codes with code snippets where it takes allot of guessing, which era this was valid in.
Most open software projects have much better online documentation than Apple’s Quicktime. It’s a mess. A mess with a messy history. Once things work they might be great. It also probably great if you work for Apple have access at the internal communication paths. But for a 3rd party developer it’s hard to get into this. Specially if the API would be a smart part of you have actually to do.
I will NOT make a living by coding around the Quicktime API in the next years. It’s just a small part of what I have to do.
OpenGL for instance is also just a small part of what I do. But I have no problems there: I get the code, the documentation, and can drag this knowledge along in the projects that I do. Same with databases. But Quicktime is a horrible beast to get started with.
Almost as bad as ‘AppleScript’. But I rather not start writing about that.