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macOS I want to become a Mac developer. Where do I start?

I

inigel

macrumors regular
Original poster
I want to get into Cocoa developing for both iPhone and Mac OS X.

I have looked at some books at Angus & Robinson's website (Amazon isn't available in Australia) and want some recent ones. ie: 2007, 2008, preferably Leopard.

Any advice would be tops.
 
Join the ADC.

Get the Hillegas book and work your way through it. It's not great but it's (amazingly) the only game in town.
 
If you're new to object-oriented programming, and do not have a background in C, I recommend Steven Kochan's book, Programming in Objective-C.
 
I'm getting by a different way than most, in case you're interested.

First I looked up online tutorials on C. Unfortunately I lost the bookmark but I did have one particular website that was all I needed to learn everything, and even to understand pointers though I still don't see how they're useful...

After I got my C background, (you just need to know the basics of C, you don't have to be able to write a program or anything.) I got hillegas' book.

I've been working through the book, but in my own way. I work through it for a bit, but I get bored easily 😡 so when I can't take it anymore I look through the table of contents and pick an interesting subject. I then read that chapter, to see if I can handle learning it. Then I go to x-code, and with a mixture of the book, google results, and the xcode documentation I learn how to do whatever it is. This forum and the cocoa-dev mailing list are useful too.
 
thank you forquare I had completely forgotten about that tutorial... I highly recommend it. It was the first tutorial I was able to get all the way through without problem. So I second highly recommend it 😀

Also Steve Kochan's book has been recommended to me many times, and I'm sure it's great. But if you can learn from free tutorials and online documents, that's better. And I found the website I used:
http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html
There's so much there for you to check out, you can learn just the basics like how to declare a variable, or enough to be an expert C programmer. And just in case you're interested, they have C++ stuff too.
 
liptonlover said:
I've been working through the book, but in my own way. I work through it for a bit, but I get bored easily 😡 so when I can't take it anymore I look through the table of contents and pick an interesting subject. I then read that chapter, to see if I can handle learning it. Then I go to x-code, and with a mixture of the book, google results, and the xcode documentation I learn how to do whatever it is. This forum and the cocoa-dev mailing list are useful too.
Click to expand...

That's how I did it too...
 
Thanks for your responses.

I've installed Xcode and had a little play-around and ordered the Hillegass book. Although I couldn't find volume 3 available in Australia. I'll keep looking.

Thanks!
 
Sorry for the blasphemy but is there a way to make GUI applications with non-Objective-C core code? Considering how programming for Windows allow freedom of C, C++ or C# in the same Win32 interface
 
inigel said:
Thanks for your responses.

I've installed Xcode and had a little play-around and ordered the Hillegass book. Although I couldn't find volume 3 available in Australia. I'll keep looking.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
did u join the adc, ihave a free account, try that one, cant say what ive gotten through it but join
 
xster said:
Sorry for the blasphemy but is there a way to make GUI applications with non-Objective-C core code? Considering how programming for Windows allow freedom of C, C++ or C# in the same Win32 interface
Click to expand...

Kind of a strange thread to resurect for your question, but to answer your question, yes you can write GUI apps for osx using languages other than Objective-C. Carbon uses C++ for example.
 
This is the same advice I posted in a related thread:

Go to www.Apress.com and get the following PDF books.

Learn C on the Mac
Learn Objective-C on the Mac

If you like you can also pick up a nice book on learning to program on the iPhone.

Then get the softcover book "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass.

With these three books you'll have Mac-oriented texts to teach yourself how to program on a Mac. Clearly there are other things to read and study. These will give you a solid start on the topic.
 
neutrino23... do you also recommend getting something on Applescript? Is that not helpful in learning development for Macs? I am looking at Saghoian's book.
 
Applescript isn't directly related to actual programming. It's a scripting language, meant for heavier stuff that usually digs deeper into the system. It is not a necessary thing to learn at all to be a successful developer. That being said, I would learn it anyways as the more you learn, the more you'll understand about programming, and you may find it useful too.
Nate
 
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