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Re: What Should I learn Before Cocoa?

Welcome to the world of Cocoa!

As everyone here has said, C is important. The "C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie is, at least for me, the Bible on C.

As for Cocoa development, Aaron's book is fine. But his book was extended from a seminar program he put together to teach people how to code up in Cocoa. The problem I found was that it seemed as though important or enhancing details were never given. I imagine that such info would have been filled in by Aaron or some other instructor.

The best book I've found so far, one that goes into a good deal of detail about not only the process but the why's of the process, is "Cocoa Applications" by Garfinkel and Mahoney. For example, their discussion of outlets, targets, etc. is very good.

Ideally, you'd get both books. Go through Garfinkel and then hit Hillegass' book. Together, you'll come out really well rounded.

Lastly, but certainly not leastly (is that a word?), O'Reilley Press' "Cocoa in a Nutshell" is a must. Yeah, you don't need a book that shows the AppKit and Foundation classes. But it sure is handy. And the commentary is very well done. What I did was, while going through an example using Hillegass' or Garfinkel's book, I'd look up the class in the Nutshell and read all about that class. You don't learn it that well at that instant. But it does put a bug in your head for the future.

Just my 2" worth. Good luck!

Jim Hillhouse


On Wednesday, September 3, 2003, at 09:51 PM, Nick Zitzmann wrote:

On Wednesday, September 3, 2003, at 04:33 PM, John Thacher wrote:

I am very interested in innovating with the cocoa programming language..

<PEDANTIC>
Cocoa is not a programming language. Cocoa is a set of two frameworks (AppKit and Foundation) of Objective-C classes that are used by many Mac OS X applications, tools, and system components. Objective-C is the name of the programming language used by the Cocoa frameworks.
</PEDANTIC>

My only
problem is that I'm not so sure if i should step up to Cocoa quiet yet.. You see the
only programming language I know very well is REALBasic.. I was just wondering if i
should learn some C/C++ Objective C before Stepping up.

Welcome to the real world. <;*)

Definitely learn C before learning Objective-C. Objective-C is a superset of C, and even if you don't use the standard library much in any Objective-C programs you write, you still need to know how functions work, the difference between an "unsigned long long" and an "extern signed double", how pointers work, etc.

You don't necessarily need to know C++ to learn Objective-C. Learning about object-oriented design & development in general is much more important.

I am interested in buying
a book Called "Learning Cocoa with Objective C" (Recommended by ADC.) Could
you please tell me if you suggest me reading that to step up to cocoa or if i should go
somewhere else first.

I wasn't impressed with the first edition of this book; it gave a lot of examples but didn't really say why things worked the way they did. I haven't read any later editions.

If you're new, then Aaron Hillegass' book is probably best... Though I'd strongly recommend learning at least C first. The most important C reference is "The C Programming Language" by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie, but you might want to look for a book intended for learners as well...

Nick Zitzmann
AIM/iChat: dragonsdontsleep
Check out my software page: http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/

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 >Re: What Should I learn Before Cocoa? (From: Nick Zitzmann <email@hidden>)



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