The answers are “It’s not” and “It won’t.” You may not like the answer, but that’s how it is. There’s no disrespect meant to Windows coders – you could reverse the questions and you would still get the same answer – at least today.

There’s a natural human tendency to understand new things in terms of things we already understand. You can see this when you introduce widely experienced coders to  OS X; every time they see something that looks familiar, they’ll say “Ah, OS X works just like fill-in-the-blank.” That’s a trap that will mislead even the best: coding for OS X is not like anything you already know.  Well, unless maybe you were a NextStep or  SmallTalk coder, but even those only help in a general way.

Actual question from an actual Windows coder: “What’s the OS X equivalent of the Windows registry?”

Actual answer: “There is no registry.”

If you can get your head around that, you will start to learn, Neo…