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Cocoa in a Nutshell
Cocoa is a great thing to learn, and if you've got some relevant experience with other languages, this book is a great way to learn it. It's one of the Apple Developer Connection recommended O'Reilly titles, and comprises a complete and thorough reference to the language that most Cocoa developers will appreciate.
I say most Cocoa developers rather than all of them because this is of course a Nutshell handbook - it's not intended to serve as a step-by-step tutorial for those without any prior Cocoa or object-oriented programming experience (for that, there's Learning Cocoa with Objective-C). Readers completely unfamiliar with the language may find the book a little bewildering, it's true. However, that's not to say you need to have already mastered the language before picking up the Nutshell book - the first part contains quite a decent introduction, and if you're already familiar with something like Java, this will probably be all you need. I have a couple of years of experience with C and Java myself, and although this was my first Cocoa book, I didn't feel lost when reading the book's first half.
Coauthor Michael Beam notes that "The 'In a Nutshell' format had always been a very efficient means of communicating information, particularly for more experienced developers. Cocoa is a very verbose and wordy API; that is, the method names are long and can have many arguments. It is often the case that a developer can be moving along in his code, and he knows what method to use, but can't remember the precise syntax. This book seeks to provide a quick way to look up that syntax." I think that's a goal it achieves admirably, and as long as readers are aware they're buying a reference and not a gentle introduction to programming, they won't be disappointed.
It's primarily the second half of the book that serves as a complement to Apple's documentation for the Foundation and AppKit classes. Apple's Cocoa site is better than it used to be, and it does include a basic API Reference along the line's of Sun's site for the Java API - you can use it for the kind of syntax-checking Beam is talking about, and many developers do just that. If you're already in the habit of looking things up on the Apple site, the API documentation in this book won't change your life. I prefer it to the web version, partially because there's slightly more explanation of the various classes, but not everyone will feel the same way.
So, who should buy this book? The intended audience is pretty much the same as that of the other programming-related Nutshell books. If you're completely new to programming, don't bother. You'll be much better off starting with something that assumes no knowledge of programming concepts and skills. On the other hand, if you're an experienced Cocoa developer who'd rather use Apple's Cocoa site than shell out for a book, there's really no reason to do so. But plenty of people don't fall into either of these categories. If you've got some OOP experience, and especially if you've already fumbled your way through a little bit of Cocoa but would like to learn more, you'll find the overview section very useful and the reference section convenient. (It's probably also worth noting that, at least at the moment, Amazon is offering Cocoa in a Nutshell for $15.98, down from $39.95. Even if you're not totally convinced it's worth forty bucks, it's definitely worth sixteen.)
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AppKiDo It parses the cocoa docs installed by XCode for quick easy access.
For example, here's a script (from the RubyCocoa home page) that plays the system sounds:Although he probably could have use Dir.glob rather than parsing the output of ls, but, anyhow...
The Army reading list
It's probably also worth noting that, at least at the moment, Amazon is offering Cocoa in a Nutshell for $15.98, down from $39.95.
That's probably a good indication that a new edition is on its way. Like most other frameworks, Cocoa is constantly growing. Apple recently added the controller layer and key value binding to support it. These things are important, but they aren't mentioned in the Nutshell book right now. $16 isn't a bad deal for a slightly out of date edition, IMO, but if you want a complete reference, wait a month or two. WWDC is coming up, and I would be surprised if O'Reilly didn't update this volume then.
Besides, if you're using Xcode, or even if you're not, you hardly need a paper reference to Cocoa. Xcode's code completion feature really helps jog your memory, and full documentation for all the classes is just a click or two away.
Don't forget O'Reilly offers upgrades to their books. If you absolutely must have Cocoa in a Nutshell now, snag it from Amazon and then send in your title page and $27.97 when the new edition arrives. Cheaper than buying the old edition at full price and then upgrading to the newer.
If you can wait, of course, you'll get it cheapest of all.
Well, there is no new edition of Cocoa in a Nutshell listed on the O'Reilly New and Upcoming Titles Page. Then again, the upcoming titles list only goes through June. Perhaps we can expect the new edition in July.
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how can you properly use a language without understand what makes the language fundamentally different from others? each language has it's own set of useful features that make certain design patterns obsolete or easier. none of them cover the CORE of cocoa! obj-c. they all do a half-assed job in my opinion, so i bought and read a book just on objective-c. i highly recommend Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan. I've written a large tutorial on the objective-c language by itself based off of many of his examples, and have provided links to other objective-c tutorials and cocoa/obj-c books at the bottom of the page.
- tristan
For anyone interested, GNUStep implements the Cocoa API.
http://www.gnustep.org/
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
There is nothing in this book that isn't on the developer cd documentation or online.
C on ceptual/ObjectiveC/
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'Cocoa in a nutshell' contains a short introductory chapter on Obj-C, one on the Foundation library, one on App-Kit, one on Quartz and a few others, they're okay but not great.
If you want to learn Obj-C you'd be better of reading:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/
After that the rest of the book is a big Javadoc-style API reference to all of Cocoa.
If you really need it in dead-tree form then maybe it's useful, but otherwise look at:
http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/Coc
Very true; I actually learnt the OpenStep API by using that NeXT book you mention and some GNUstep tutorials. My Obj-C experience is only on GNUstep (not Cocoa), but the information needed is the same.
On that note my next buy will be Programming in Objective-C; the reviews seem to indicate that it's a good book *and* ina rather unusual fashion as examples for both Cocoa and GNUstep.
I would think that people entirely new to Objective-C and Cocoa would be best served by Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X, which was written by Aaron Hillegass. Hillegass worked at NeXT back when Cocoa was still called OpenStep and he went to Apple when they bought NeXT to teach the Apple developers about it. He wrote the first course on OpenStep programming and he's the founder of Big Nerd Ranch, arguably the best place for Cocoa classes.
It's a very good book. In it, he goes through everything from building a basic console app through building a simple editor for SGML.
And you have to fill out a card with your contact info to get the book, and O'Reilly catalogs start showing up at your address a few weeks later.
They're good catalogs - I don't mind.
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Programming in Objective C is a great book if that's what you want to do: learn to program in Objective C. But if you want to learn Cocoa, there's one book to beat. Cocoa Programming by Anguish, Buck, and Yacktman, three coding demigods of NeXTSTEP.