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iOS The First App

A

ACiB

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
32
0
Hey all, please read on, as I would REALLY appreciate your help/ideas/advice.

I'm studying computer science, I live in Mexico, and I'm on my first semester in college. I'm currently taking a C Programming class, I know understand the basic concepts of programming (NOT object oriented), for, while, prints and scans, etc. I want to take on iOS programming to start programming an iPad app as soon as possible, now I know this is a long progress it requires patience, time and devotion, and I've done some reading and know I have to learn Object Oriented Programming first in order to learn Objective-C and then actually make apps.
I'm just asking for a good way to start programming actually functional apps in the least time possible. If I manage to be a well, not advance, but at least intermediate app programmer in 6 months or less then I might be able to be hired for a project that I'd love to be part of, so I'm getting info from as many sources as I can, and any help, advice would be greatly appreciated.

The general idea of my app is one that at start asks for username/password, then validates in a server, after that it displays what other users have done (kind of a social app) and lists some itesm that if the user taps, a new window comes in with specific info about the item,

Right now my internet connection is as lousy as anything in the world gets, but next week I'm getting fiber optic installation, until then I can't download the iTunes U Stanford tutorials. Are those even good? Any advice, ideas for the app, or good thoughts greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time, your comments will really make a difference,
Alex.
 
The Stanford tutorials are good and exactly what I would recommend.

For the next week while you wait to be able to access them... Hang tight, study up on C? IDK, I'm sure someone else will have some book suggestions for Obj-C, but I feel like the world of iOS is changing too fast for any snapshot of it in a book to remain current for more than a few months, and thus don't recommend them as the Apple docs seem to be all you need... With a little googling, maybe.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
The Stanford tutorials are good and exactly what I would recommend.

For the next week while you wait to be able to access them... Hang tight, study up on C? IDK, I'm sure someone else will have some book suggestions for Obj-C, but I feel like the world of iOS is changing too fast for any snapshot of it in a book to remain current for more than a few months, and thus don't recommend them as the Apple docs seem to be all you need... With a little googling, maybe.
Click to expand...




Agree, the Standford tutorials are very good. They did not record the class for Spring 2011. The website still says they are determining if they are going to do it for this quarter (which started last week). I'm hoping they do, as it'd be nice to have a series under Xcode 4.. as if you follow along you'll have to do a lot of start/stopping to figure out how to replicate what they are doing in Xcode 3 if you are using 4.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
...I'm sure someone else will have some book suggestions for Obj-C...
Click to expand...
Stephen Kochan's "Programming in Objective-C" is highly recommended.

ArtOfWarfare said:
...but I feel like the world of iOS is changing too fast for any snapshot of it in a book to remain current for more than a few months...
Click to expand...
The fundamentals of Objective-C programming have remained fairly static for quite some time, and when starting out, that is the core to concentrate on, IMHO.
 
dejo said:
Stephen Kochan's "Programming in Objective-C" is highly recommended.


The fundamentals of Objective-C programming have remained fairly static for quite some time, and when starting out, that is the core to concentrate on, IMHO.
Click to expand...

Maybe... I'm just thinking the first year I was learning there weren't properties, and then suddenly they appeared in Obj-C 2.0 and were being used in example code everywhere online and there were no books that could help me with them.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
I'm just thinking the first year I was learning there weren't properties, and then suddenly they appeared in Obj-C 2.0 and were being used in example code everywhere online and there were no books that could help me with them.
Click to expand...
Properties are, as robbieduncan likes to put it, just "syntactic sugar", that make dealing with instance variables much easier. But their introduction did not prohibit older code from still compiling. Even to this day, you can write code that compiles and yet never mentions a property. So, although a book may not feature the latest-and-greatest, if it is concentrating on teaching the fundamentals, such "sugar" shouldn't be absolutely necessary to understand the basics. Kind-of-a "learn to walk before you can run" thing. Again, all just IMHO.
 
dejo said:
Properties are, as robbieduncan likes to put it, just "syntactic sugar", that make dealing with instance variables much easier. But their introduction did not prohibit older code from still compiling. Even to this day, you can write code that compiles and yet never mentions a property. So, although a book may not feature the latest-and-greatest, if it is concentrating on teaching the fundamentals, such "sugar" shouldn't be absolutely necessary to understand the basics. Kind-of-a "learn to walk before you can run" thing. Again, all just IMHO.
Click to expand...

While it's true you don't need to use properties, the fact of the matter is a lot of online example code will contain it, and as some one who doesn't know properties yet, it makes learning whatever you're trying to learn twice as difficult. But I suppose you're right, these kinds of changes aren't happening that often. Mostly the year to year changes in iOS are new features getting added... New methods for old classes and new classes altogether... And then a handful of old methods being marked for removal in future versions.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
While it's true you don't need to use properties, the fact of the matter is a lot of online example code will contain it, and as some one who doesn't know properties yet, it makes learning whatever you're trying to learn twice as difficult. But I suppose you're right, these kinds of changes aren't happening that often. Mostly the year to year changes in iOS are new features getting added... New methods for old classes and new classes altogether... And then a handful of old methods being marked for removal in future versions.
Click to expand...

And a whole suite of API changes tomorrow. ;-)
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Huh?

Did you just break the NDA?

I actually haven't looked at iOS 5 at all, because I can't think of how my apps could benefit from the new features.
Click to expand...

Didn't break NDA at all. I didn't say at all about what changes, and the existance of iOS 5 is well known. Even more so now. :p
 
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