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best cocoa -obj.c book
- Thread starter mmmdreg
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None OF Them
None of the Cocoa/ObjC specific books are good for a total programming noob. They do not teach you the basic ideas behind all programming languages, they do not teach you about good design, the use of paterns and how to think in an object-oriented fasion. Most of them also do not teach you C which is very helpfull in writing Cocoa (for example NSPoint is a C Structure, not an ObjC class). The best starting point (in my opinion) is to learn C the get a general reference on Object-Oriented programming (probably using SmallTalk or Java as the language) and then learn ObjC and Cocoa.
None of the Cocoa/ObjC specific books are good for a total programming noob. They do not teach you the basic ideas behind all programming languages, they do not teach you about good design, the use of paterns and how to think in an object-oriented fasion. Most of them also do not teach you C which is very helpfull in writing Cocoa (for example NSPoint is a C Structure, not an ObjC class). The best starting point (in my opinion) is to learn C the get a general reference on Object-Oriented programming (probably using SmallTalk or Java as the language) and then learn ObjC and Cocoa.
Hmm VB eh? That's not really a good place to start from! I was serious when I suggested that you learn C first. ObjC is based on C and all C functions/syntax and ideas are available from ObjC. VB is not trully Object-Oriented so learning about that first would also be a good idea. Look into design paterns (you can get loads of books on this), especially MVC would be well worth it.
I only have 1 of the books - the first version of Learning Cocoa. On the scale of technical books, especially O'Reilly ones I would rate this one quite poorly. It really does not cover enough of the stuff you need to know and the fast rate of change in Mac OSX has rendered some parts of the book useless and the screen shots of the tools are now totally wrong. Following the on-line tutorials is probably a good place to start.
I only have 1 of the books - the first version of Learning Cocoa. On the scale of technical books, especially O'Reilly ones I would rate this one quite poorly. It really does not cover enough of the stuff you need to know and the fast rate of change in Mac OSX has rendered some parts of the book useless and the screen shots of the tools are now totally wrong. Following the on-line tutorials is probably a good place to start.
Learn C first
I am trying to learn Cocoa with objective c right now too I ordered two books I will go find them in a minute and edit my post, Plus there is an Objective C document on apples developers page.
ALL of them say you need to know some C to understand it and you do Im ordering a progarmming C for mac right now.
Oh ya and I know VB and thats it too so we are kindof in the same boat.
Edit: here they are
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_4/104-6578549-2944747?v=glance&s=books
and
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_6/104-6578549-2944747?v=glance&s=books
I Like the bottom one better, also here is the C book I dont know if its good, anyone know its the only one for mac I could find and its about 6 years old
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201484064/104-6578549-2944747?v=glance
anyone have a better C book to start with
I am trying to learn Cocoa with objective c right now too I ordered two books I will go find them in a minute and edit my post, Plus there is an Objective C document on apples developers page.
ALL of them say you need to know some C to understand it and you do Im ordering a progarmming C for mac right now.
Oh ya and I know VB and thats it too so we are kindof in the same boat.
Edit: here they are
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_4/104-6578549-2944747?v=glance&s=books
and
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_6/104-6578549-2944747?v=glance&s=books
I Like the bottom one better, also here is the C book I dont know if its good, anyone know its the only one for mac I could find and its about 6 years old
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201484064/104-6578549-2944747?v=glance
anyone have a better C book to start with
I'm currently working through this book and I find it to be a very good, detailed book. It contains a good overview of the different design patterns, such as MVC.
You should still have a reasonable grasp of the C language before starting this book, however. It's been a long time since I learned C, so I don't know of any good books that might be out there now.
You should still have a reasonable grasp of the C language before starting this book, however. It's been a long time since I learned C, so I don't know of any good books that might be out there now.
I learnt C with a book called "A Book on C". This was the text book for CS1 at Edinburgh. It's pretty good, but we could all program a bit to start with. I learnt C after learning Basic on a Spectrum, then moving to BBC Basic on an Acorn A3000 and learning Pascal at school on an Acorn.