macOS What a con.....

For Cocoa (with Objective-C), I suggest Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X Second Edition Aaron Hillegass Addison-Wesley 2004. My copy, despite being bought in the UK, has $44.99 on the back.

Personally, I find Apple's own documentation really hard to use. I have heard it said that the biggest hurdle is understanding where stuff is.

If you have some specific issues with XCode, feel free to point them out. Xcode 2 is a big improvement and while I sometimes find navigation frustrating, I quite like the way it is straightforward to add targets and frameworks (don't think I have really needed a manual for the IDE per se).

I understand the experience. I used Borland C++ from version 3 through version 5. It was quick and easy and their OWL framework worked miracles for creating Windows applications.

The Hillegass book is good plus the O'Reilly books go a long way toward de-mystifying the projects but the Apple tools are rather unusual.

I'm sure that Borland's tools weren't immediately accessible but you learnt those. You'll find your way with Xcode and the rest of the Apple tools.

If you want cross-platform GUI, try Qt from Trolltech. This book isn't great, but it's OK.

FireArse said:

Guys, dont buy "The Mac Xcode 2 Book", i seriously wouldn't wipe my arse with it. (by Andy Ihnatko and Cohen)

Click to expand...

I didn't want to say anything about that book because I didn't have anything good to say. Now I can say I agree with you 500%. I found a better book here:

http://www.meandmark.com/xcodebook.html

It wasn't the best book, but it was much better than the that other one, at least they weren't making jokes half the time. Plus, with the "Xcode Tools Sensei" book, you can download a chapter for free to get a feel of the book, and get an idea if you want to buy it. Plus you can downloaded as a pdf if you want, no waiting for it to be shipped to you.

There is a new book out, this one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764573993/104-1994790-1463935?v=glance&n=283155

However I haven't read any of it, it just noticed it and thought I'd pass along the info.

Good luck

FireArse said:

Can anyone suggest a good C++ with GUI tutorial (from the ground up cos in this area im a newb) I really wanna get into this - but the information is really testing me.

Click to expand...

Are you already a programmer? I wouldn't get an XCode book unless I was an experienced developer coming from Windows and just wanted to get up to speed on the IDE.

Instead, get a book on Carbon or Cocoa (The latter strongly preferred, if you dont mind writing Obj-C instead of C++). Those books will walk you through using the IDE as you go along, so you learn the functions that are most pertinent for what you will be doing. The IDE isn't really something worth learning in itself, unless you're a professional developer.

savar said:

Are you already a programmer? I wouldn't get an XCode book unless I was an experienced developer coming from Windows and just wanted to get up to speed on the IDE.

Instead, get a book on Carbon or Cocoa (The latter strongly preferred, if you dont mind writing Obj-C instead of C++). Those books will walk you through using the IDE as you go along, so you learn the functions that are most pertinent for what you will be doing. The IDE isn't really something worth learning in itself, unless you're a professional developer.

Click to expand...

I fought against Obj-C for a long time because the proliferation of different languages was driving me nuts-- and I found the Obj-C syntax a bit ugly.

That said, I finally gave in and I've been pretty happy with Cocoa. Not having multiple inheritance is a bit of a bummer, but other than that it's pretty functional. The ability to add functionality to standard classes through categories is pretty slick. It's not something you'll be able to use anywhere else, but most of coding these days is learning the frameworks and the syntax is actually one of the smaller hurdles.

If you're interested in taking the step to Cocoa, then Xcode isn't bad for a free tool. The best book I've found is Building a Cocoa Application at O'Reilly.