Re: learning Cocoa (was Re: Lost contents!)
Re: learning Cocoa (was Re: Lost contents!)
- Subject: Re: learning Cocoa (was Re: Lost contents!)
- From: Brent Gulanowski <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 22:28:57 -0400
Another newbie here who shares the feeling that Apple is a bit over-focused
on Interface design in their training for cocoa. I'm certainly impressed
with Obj-C and the frameworks, but some of us want to, you know, DO STUFF.
Last time I opened a Cocoa doc on the website, most of the info was "to be
filled in later" (not in those exact words).
I've got this book "Rhapsody Developer's Guide" by Jesse Feiler which I've
been flipping through and seems to have something to offer, even if it's two
years old. The introductory chapters on OOP and Obj-C's dynamic features are
really good. It's probably out of print or something, but check it out if
you can find a copy. I figure, learn possibly obsolete ways of doing things
and then learn what has been changed or improved, but at least you get a
feel for the whole enchilada. I bought the book in a fit of optimism that I
would be programming for Rhapsody "any time now" LOL.
If I get seriously into it in the next year, I'll be lucky. I'm only in 2nd
year comp sci, but I'm such a hopeless Mac lover ... Anybody who is new and
hasn't should of course still read the Inside OS X: Obj-C book from Apple.
The only thing in there that hurt my head a little were the compiler
directives -- but I was just getting used to Java and it added a weird
deeper layer of lessened abstraction that seemed kind of surreal by
comparison. The shameless intermingling of the runtime, the language and the
frameworks is the big hurdle for me. And the tools are in there too.
<rant>
Then again, maybe the problem is that no-one has bitten the bullet and made
a tutorial that just allows learning the language from the console, like
you'd learn C, C++, Java, Basic, and most scripting languages. I'd like to
learn CF first, and then learn AppKit and IB. I know interfaces are
important, but I've been wading throught Apple UI documentation and
tutorials for four years and I'm sick to death of being able to make a UI
but having no application to put it in front of! Go here to feel my pain:
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Cocoa/TasksAndConcepts/Programmin
gTopics/OpenGL/index.html
I wanna do something fun, dammit. Not calculate currency conversions. :p
</rant>
Brent
>
From: Brian Howard <email@hidden>
>
>
Apple recommends designing the GUI first!!!!!! With Interface Builder
>
it's supposed to be a piece of cake. But when I get tied up with trying
>
to make sense of IB, I chill out by working on the Model side of the
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Application I'm striving for; gee, it's up to several dozen custom
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classes, each containing methods that contain dozens or hundreds of
>
lines of code, and I'm way ahead here. And this is supposed to be the
>
hard part!