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Thunderface

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 16, 2010
3
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I've looked into programming for the iPhone/iPad a little bit and have registered myself a free account on the apple developer program(just to see if it's something I'd like to do). I was wondering if anyone could direct me towards some tutorials or books that would be good for me to start with so I could learn. I do have some experience with Visual Studio C# (The form coding stuff), not sure if that helps anything, being C# and all :p.

I have been looking at this book, maybe you guys know if it's good or not: http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470496665.html

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Darwin.
 
I've looked through those, the Apple website, Youtube and have googled everything I could think of but I still can't find tutorials that teach you the xCode environment and how to code iPhone apps with it.

Maybe I'm just overlooking something and can't find them (in which case a link would be great).
 
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/l...ptual/iPhone101/Articles/00_Introduction.html

Google terms: iphone tutorial site:developer.apple.com

If that isn't what you're looking for, then please provide more detail.


On Xcode itself, google terms: xcode tutorial site:developer.apple.com

The first several results are Mac-targeted tutorials (i.e. applications to run on Macs, not iOS). However, the above iPhone tutorial is also listed.

You can learn a lot of fundamentals by writing Foundation Tool programs targeted to run as Terminal commands on Mac OS X. The absence of a GUI means attention is focused on fundamentals, such as frequently used classes like NSString, NSArray, NSDictionary, or non-interacting technologies like Core Data.


All the above tutorials are essentially Introductions, not comprehensive tutorials on every aspect of Xcode, Objective-C, nor iOS. For that, there are several different guides on Apple's website, and the keyword guide is often significant in searches. Examples:
xcode workspace guide
xcode build settings guide
cocoa fundamentals guide
cocoa foundation guide

There are also numerous books, some of which presume that you already know Objective-C, or are already familiar with Xcode and Interface Builder. These are targeted more at an intermediate audience, not beginners. The best way to identify these is to look at Chapter 2. If it's completely alien and utterly different from Chapter 1, then it's probably not for beginners. Chapter 1 of almost any book will be introductory or background material, which may have little relationship to the speed at which completely new subjects are covered in the rest of the book.
 
I did some more google searches and decided to obtain a copy of this book:
http://www.amazon.ca/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430224592

It looks like it covers a lot and will get me a good start, plus I really prefer books over reading off a computer monitor.

Thanks for all the help.

I started with that book around early to mid may of this year. I've got an app on the app store right now and im planning to release an update shortly.

Force yourself to work through the chapters. work straight through until you've learned the concepts you feel your app development will need. Highlight things and throw sticky-notes all over it.

(Like at the code that makes the keyboard disappear) Some useful stuff is hard to find via the index.
 
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I did some more google searches and decided to obtain a copy of this book:
http://www.amazon.ca/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430224592

It looks like it covers a lot and will get me a good start, plus I really prefer books over reading off a computer monitor.

Thanks for all the help.

I believe that book assumes you already know Objective-C/Cocoa. It might be too sharp a learning curve coming from Visual Studio and C#. I was also eying it at the bookstore but then it said I should buy another book just about Objective-C/Cocoa before if I had no previous experience with them.

I am an experienced C++/Java/Python developer and I purchased this book:
http://www.amazon.ca/iPhone-Developers-Cookbook-Building-Applications/dp/0321555457

Even though the book is not specifically for teaching Objective-C/Cocoa, it is designed for people with experience in C/C++ at the very minimum and has a pretty meaty section on introductory Objective-C/Cocoa. Even so, I am finding myself having to reread parts of it several times for me to properly understand what is going on. Objective C, though it is a super-set of C, has some very alien properties to C/C++ developers I find.
 
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I believe that book assumes you already know Objective-C/Cocoa. It might be too sharp a learning curve coming from Visual Studio and C#. I was also eying it at the bookstore but then it said I should buy another book just about Objective-C/Cocoa before if I had no previous experience with them.

I am an experienced C++/Java/Python developer and I purchased this book:
http://www.amazon.ca/iPhone-Developers-Cookbook-Building-Applications/dp/0321555457

Even though the book is not specifically for teaching Objective-C/Cocoa, it is designed for people with experience in C/C++ at the very minimum and has a pretty meaty section on introductory Objective-C/Cocoa. Even so, I am finding myself having to reread parts of it several times for me to properly understand what is going on. Objective C, though it is a super-set of C, has some very alien properties to C/C++ developers I find.

I entered the iphone world with some c++/Java and a bunch of matlab experience. (college course level education on programming basics too)

I purchased the cookbook at the same time as the "Beginning iPhone 3 development" book.

For priming myself with Obj-C I read the documentation located here:
http://cocoadevcentral.com/ .

I found that from there the "Beginning iPhone 3 book" was the best path for me. It was a little lighting on super detailed information and allowed me to start in the middle with Objective-C and Cocoa development. The cookbook is still an excellent reference for learning how to do 'things' though. How do I add a search bar to a table. It's broken into these small recipes, and less of a developmental process for each app.

I recommend both, lol. (You could wait for the 4.0 updated ones too)
 
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Even though the book is not specifically for teaching Objective-C/Cocoa, it is designed for people with experience in C/C++ at the very minimum and has a pretty meaty section on introductory Objective-C/Cocoa. Even so, I am finding myself having to reread parts of it several times for me to properly understand what is going on. Objective C, though it is a super-set of C, has some very alien properties to C/C++ developers I find.

Very curious. What properties of Objective C did you find most alien to a C/C++ developer?
 
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