Getting started in making Mac apps?

[elbirth]

First of all, I have very little programming knowledge. When I had the crazy idea to attempt a computer science major in college, I took a class on java, which was a nightmare for me (the horrible professor just made it worse). So while I don't really know how to do any full blown programming coming out of that class, I can look at code and somewhat make sense of it some... not that that's necessarily helpful.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there are any resources available for getting started in making cocoa apps? I don't particularly have any solid ideas at the moment for what I'd want to try making, but the motivation for this comes from my Windows days.... several friends of mine and I used IRC chat rooms a bit to talk and I took mIRC and modified it a bit (with help from online sources) to personalize it and add a few interesting things to it.

It was fun and I'd like to perhaps do some things on the Mac as well if it's not a huge endeavor.

[Eraserhead]

Originally Posted by elbirth

First of all, I have very little programming knowledge. When I had the crazy idea to attempt a computer science major in college, I took a class on java, which was a nightmare for me (the horrible professor just made it worse). So while I don't really know how to do any full blown programming coming out of that class, I can look at code and somewhat make sense of it some... not that that's necessarily helpful.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there are any resources available for getting started in making cocoa apps? I don't particularly have any solid ideas at the moment for what I'd want to try making, but the motivation for this comes from my Windows days.... several friends of mine and I used IRC chat rooms a bit to talk and I took mIRC and modified it a bit (with help from online sources) to personalize it and add a few interesting things to it.

It was fun and I'd like to perhaps do some things on the Mac as well if it's not a huge endeavor.

Applescript is a good place to start, it allows you to control various parts of the operating system and make programs work together. As usual I will suggest getting a copy of the pdf book AppleScript for Absolute Starters.

Otherwise a download of Xcode (it's also on your Mac OS X CD) is useful, though before learning Objective C which you usually use to make Cocoa applications I would learn C (preferable) or Java, though you can make pretty good (though with slow interfaces) applications with Applescript Studio (Applescript in Xcode).

[Fairly]

Don't run before you can walk and don't walk before you can crawl. Right now you're about to try crawling for the first time. This isn't trivial. It's why people get all sorts of university degrees and work 14-15 hours a day at it.

Start with something 'BASIC' and get 'Mac apps' out of your mind for a while. At least a year or two.

Or do you think you could pick up a book and learn to perform surgery on yourself in a matter of weeks or months?