Slashdot Mirror

A guy named something like Hillgass or Hillegass used to put out really good books on Objective-C.

That's this guy.

He's pretty awesome, so is his training outfit.

I read his first iOS book, then attended the advanced iOS class at BNR.

Definitely a good start.

However, as is always the case, most of the education comes after the classes end.

As far as Swift/ObjC?

As was mentioned earlier, the API/SDK is the big learning part. That can take a couple of years. I feel as if I am just up to speed in the last year on this stuff, and I took my last class (in ObjC) about two years ago.

I learned Swift pretty quickly. Luckily, I already have a good handle on the API.

There's a pretty good chance that any iOS programming that you learn from now on will be in Swift. The API is almost identical between Swift and Objective-C.

The big difference is that you can be more casual in Swift. For example, Core Foundation memory management is handled transparently in Swift, but not in ObjC.

I would say that you are probably better off learning ObjC first, but don't put off learning Swift. It's quite possible to learn both at the same time.

However, this post is an empirical one, based on fact, reason, and personal experience. I fully expect it to get buried amongst the "Fanboi/Apple SUX" arguments that always permeate these Dice clickbait posts.

A guy named something like Hillgass or Hillegass used to put out really good books on Objective-C.

That's this guy.

He's pretty awesome, so is his training outfit.

I read his first iOS book, then attended the advanced iOS class at BNR.

Definitely a good start.

However, as is always the case, most of the education comes after the classes end.

As far as Swift/ObjC?

As was mentioned earlier, the API/SDK is the big learning part. That can take a couple of years. I feel as if I am just up to speed in the last year on this stuff, and I took my last class (in ObjC) about two years ago.

I learned Swift pretty quickly. Luckily, I already have a good handle on the API.

There's a pretty good chance that any iOS programming that you learn from now on will be in Swift. The API is almost identical between Swift and Objective-C.

The big difference is that you can be more casual in Swift. For example, Core Foundation memory management is handled transparently in Swift, but not in ObjC.

I would say that you are probably better off learning ObjC first, but don't put off learning Swift. It's quite possible to learn both at the same time.

However, this post is an empirical one, based on fact, reason, and personal experience. I fully expect it to get buried amongst the "Fanboi/Apple SUX" arguments that always permeate these Dice clickbait posts.

By that, I mean short, specific bootcamps, like the ones given by BNR.

Of course, these are only "kick-start" classes, but work very well for that sort of thing.

Also, they are un-cheap (but I think, worth it).

I guess it's one of those things where you're supposed to know who they are and if you don't, well, maybe you shouldn't be reading the list... Of course it doesn't help that they misspelled Aaron Hillegass' name. Who, by the way, very much deserves to be on that list given his major role in educating people on how to develop apps in Coocoa.

The author of this book will be teaching a class on Ruby/Ruby on Rails at Big Nerd Ranch, Aug 14 - 18:
        http://www.bignerdranch.com/classes/ruby.shtml
Disclaimer - I work for Big Nerd Ranch, but I really do think the class is going to be great.

The best Obj-C & Cocoa intro:

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

m.m.

It's actually pretty easy to join a Linux desktop to an Active Directory if you know what you're doing - try the instructions at http://weblog.bignerdranch.com/?p=6.

Marcel Molina (one of the Core Ruby on Rails Team members) is teaching a five-day Ruby/Ruby on Rails bootcamp at Big Nerd Ranch, December 5 - 9.. I work for Big Nerd Ranch, so I'm biased, but I think it is going to be an incredible class. - Aaron Hillegass

Go to Amazon and type Cocoa Programming.

http://www.bignerdranch.com/products/

you should have listened to Aaron Hillegass IMO :p

Cocoa books: Start with Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass. Once you have a handle on things I recommend cocoa programming by Scott Anguish, Erik M. Buck, Donald A. Yacktman. Beyond that all you need is apples documentation.

Good luck, dont' forget apples and omni's mailing lists. I would also recommend picking up Tiger, Core Data is amazing and will save you countless hours of work.

Aaron also teaches at Big Nerd Ranch if you can swing the fee. I took the PHP bootcamp there, and Aaron was there every day even though he was not teaching. Just by talking with him all week, I got a strong feeling he would be an excellent teacher. Aaron goes way back to NeXT days, so ObjC is something he's very familiar with.

Is all you need to write the sort of apps that you were talking about.

Xcode, as every other post has said, is free.

Wrt books, I'd recommend "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 2nd ed", by Aaron Hillegass. Aaron has a lot of experience teaching NextStep, WebObjects and OS X development, and his book reflect that experience. It is excellent - much better than the O'Reilly offerings I've seen. Big Nerd Ranch also has a book about programming the underpinnings of OS X called "Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming." Haven't seen this version book yet, but apparently it's the spiffed up, published version of BNR's student guide, so I'd bet it's pretty well done. You can get both together for $96.20 from Amazon.

There are other good references, tutorials, as well, some free on-line, and some for purchase. Do some Googling and mining on Amazon or B&N to find one that suits your purposes.

BTW, OS X has some very strong scripting capabilities built in that you might find useful for the kinds of apps you typically develop. And, as someone else noted, Ruby and other cool hacking languages come shipped with OS X and work well with XCode. Also, Eclipse, with all its goodness, runs nicely on OS X.

Lastly, if you want to put the limitations of "modern" programming languages behind you and get back to the future of software development, OS X has some of the best OSS Lisp implementations. SBCL or OpenMCL (if you want to do Cocoa apps), plus SLIME and Emacs is all a real programmer needs, and it's all free. *grynn*

Before even cracking a book, I'd probably start out with Apple's own "Getting Started" developer documentation. It's included with Xcode, and the introductory material is clear, fairly concise, and offers a lot of tutorials and code samples so you can easily see the concepts in action (this is particularly helpful if you haven't worked extensively with MVC development before).

If you intend on developing end-user stuff, be sure to check out the Human Interface Guidelines -- Mac users have expectations for how applications should "feel" and Apple has spent a lot of time and money developing and revising the HIG over the years. If it feels like a typical mediocre X11 app, it'll get torn to shreds by rabid users.

As for books...
Aaron Hillegass' Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is an excellent primer and my personal favorite. It's not cheap at US$44.99, but well worth it. The first few chapters are essentially a Cliffs Notes version of Apple's free introductory material, and from there the book tackles a little bit of everything -- Objective-C basics, bindings, custom views, localization... you name it.

O'Reilly's Learning Cocoa (aka Learning Cocoa with Objective-C in its second edition) by James Duncan Davidson isn't horrible, but isn't the best. It also isn't as up-to-date as the Hillegass book, but they'll both be dated pretty shortly with Tiger coming out in the next few months (or a couple weeks, if you believe the rumor sites).

Once you get out of the starting gate, there aren't a whole lot of applicable books (but Cocoa and Objective-C are fairly easy to pick up). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Apple's mailing lists are a great resource and the developer and API documentation is quite good in most areas.

Is it easy to program for these days?

This is an excellent introduction to the Objective-C language and the Cocoa frameworks. It's hands-on, learn-by-doing in approach, but with useful contextualization so you don't feel like you're just typing in examples.

If you're programming for Mac OS X, this book is a necessity.

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

... At Big Nerd Ranch, and it was awesome. If you like the book and you want more personal training, they're talking about doing this PHP5 bootcamp again in about 5 months. It's held at a fantastic retreat setting in georgia, so it's fairly free from distraction. If you've tried to find PHP training, you know this is an unserviced market largely, so if/when they offer this class again, jump on it fast.

I've been about 3 years into self-taught programming with books, open source examples, and trial and lots of errors up until a couple of weeks ago. Now I've got a pretty good grasp on the mechanics of object oriented programming in PHP5, Pear, and the new XML stuff. David Sklar does a great job at teaching the concepts and practical implementation of the concepts.

I was fortunate enough to be able to migrate my customer facing server to php5 a couple of days ago, so I'm able to benefit from all the new stuff I learned just over a week ago. It's been very cool.

Mac developers .. are absolutely gorgeous.

You mean like these guys?

I have both editions, and I have to say that the second edition content and writing are better.

He has incorporated 2 years worth of experiences from the teaching of the first edition at Big Nerd Ranch into this book... so it is little wonder that the second edition is better. He approached the book with the idea that "it'll be released when it is ready", and it shows. He didn't rush this out the door. You cannot find a better resource for Mac OS X programming than this author. I suggest reading anything he writes, if you are serious about programming the Mac.

As far as the content goes -- everything development (CodeWarrior aside...) in Panther is Xcode, not Project Builder -- and the second book reflects this. I had a terrible time implementing the first edition's projects in Xcode, because all of the screen shots were different -- even Interface Builder has changed quite a lot. If you are looking at both editions and do not have the first one, you won't regret getting the second one. If you have the first one, but have not started learning from it yet, you will want to skip it and get the second one. If you've already gone through the first one, the second one might help you dig more into Xcode, but the Xcode website might be all you need for that.

I hope this helps.

I have both editions, and I have to say that the second edition content and writing are better.

He has incorporated 2 years worth of experiences from the teaching of the first edition at Big Nerd Ranch into this book... so it is little wonder that the second edition is better. He approached the book with the idea that "it'll be released when it is ready", and it shows. He didn't rush this out the door. You cannot find a better resource for Mac OS X programming than this author. I suggest reading anything he writes, if you are serious about programming the Mac.

As far as the content goes -- everything development (CodeWarrior aside...) in Panther is Xcode, not Project Builder -- and the second book reflects this. I had a terrible time implementing the first edition's projects in Xcode, because all of the screen shots were different -- even Interface Builder has changed quite a lot. If you are looking at both editions and do not have the first one, you won't regret getting the second one. If you have the first one, but have not started learning from it yet, you will want to skip it and get the second one. If you've already gone through the first one, the second one might help you dig more into Xcode, but the Xcode website might be all you need for that.

I hope this helps.

http://www.bignerdranch.com/products/cocoa1.shtml

I've been looking at buying a development book (any suggestions?)

I would suggest Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass. Its not the newest book out there on OS X development using Cocoa, but Aaron knows his stuff and wrote one hell of a good book.

Aaron Hillegass's most excellent Cocoa introduction Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

When you're done with that one, skip on over and check out my defacto Cocoa bible, Cocoa Programming. Just a fantastic book, application design reference and compilation of knowlege from many years of working with these frameworks.

O'Reilly's Cocoa in a Nutshell, the API listing you've been yearning for.

Always remember to include Apple's own Cocoa developer pages.