macOS Need free online introduction to OS X Development - any suggestions?

[Molecule]

Hi

I'm looking for an introduction to OS X development aimed at someone (namely, me) who understands all the fundamental concepts of programming and so forth (for what it's worth, I also have a rudimentary knowledge of Python) and needs an introduction to developing for the Mac. Obviously, any such tutorial will need to teach Objective C, as well as explain Cocoa and the likes.

To sum up:
* It will need to teach Objective C, Cocoa, etc.
* It should assume the reader already knows how to programme
* By the same token, it should not assume that the reader is an experienced developer who has been programming for years.

Any suggestions?


Thanks in advance to all those who reply
Molecule

 

[chown33]

If you have Lion and Xcode 4.1, see here:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/General/Conceptual/Mac101/

Otherwise, please state what OS version and Xcode version you have.

If you haven't installed Xcode yet, you may want to consider your options in light of available books and online tutorials, many of which still use Xcode 3, not Xcode 4.


I'm not sure what you mean by "fundamental concepts". Composition, decomposition, factoring, modularity, scope & lifetime? The distinction between while, for and do/while; between class vs. instance, method vs. function, local vs. instance vs. static variable, local vs. heap memory, etc.

Saying that you already know how to program doesn't describe what you know. Object-oriented programming is quite different from procedural programming. Saying you know Python doesn't clarify things, either: Python does both. It may be more informative to tell us what programs you've written, in what language, and whether you designed them yourself.


I don't think there will be a single perfectly sequenced tutorial that fits all your stated criteria. I think you're going to have to try things yourself and see how it works out. Get used to doing this: it's an important developer skill.

At the very least, start here:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/

Click the "Getting Started" button in the upper right-hand pane. One of the links is "Your First Mac Application", whose URL I posted first.

The "Required Reading" button in the same pane also has, well, required reading.

You should read the other Getting Started links, too. Starting right out by diving into Xcode is often the wrong approach, even when it's a simple program like the example. You will be expected to understand terms (which the example has links to), and be expected to follow other links that might explain something in more detail. If that seems obvious to you, you should be OK following the above links.