Re: Docs, questions and stuff
Re: Docs, questions and stuff
- Subject: Re: Docs, questions and stuff
- From: Ken Tabb <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 16:49:33 +0100
And so it was that Chris Gehlker said on 24/8/01 4:11 pm:
>
On 8/24/01 5:51 AM, "email@hidden" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>
> A couple of questions for today: Can someone recommend the "Learning Cocoa"
>
> book for a newbie like me? What's the best way to learn ObjC? Should I begin
>
> from Scratch with C++ and then go to ObjC? Can you recommend a good book for
>
> "Learning ObjC"?
>
>
I see I'm going to have to don my flameproof suit.
Come out from behind that flameproof suit and fight like a man, goddammit.
>
Right now, if you are not familiar with OO at all and are limited to readily
>
available books there is really only one way to do it without a lot of
>
backtracking. Go get a good, Object Oriented C++ book like "Accelerated C++"
>
Work all the exercises in ObjC. This will be easier than it sounds. There
>
are a couple of wrinkles but folks on this list will help.
erm, maybe I missed part of the conversation, but it seems the original
poster knows neither C++ nor Obj-C (by their own admission, I mean). Is
telling him/her to buy a 'good' book on C++ (quite how they'll be able to
determine what a good C++ book looks like if they don't know C++), and
then "just translate on the fly" all the examples to Obj-C (which they
also don't know) is, I would think, going to confuse the bejezus out of
them... they'll end up not knowing which features are part of which
language, which syntax is part of which language, let alone errors in the
book they buy... they won't just be able to type it in and test as it'll
be in the wrong language.
It's kind of like buying a book called Learn French and expecting to be
fluent in Italian and not French by the time you've finished it. your way
will require them learning 2 languages instead of one.
>
The problem with "Learning Cocoa" is that the author(s) think in C. It will
>
teach you that OO is only for accessing the Cocoa frameworks. This won't
>
hurt if you are coming from an OO background but nobody should do this to a
>
newbie.
But the original poster has learned PHP so knows the basics of Object
Oriented-ness. I agree that, to a C++ or OO programmer wanting to learn
Obj-C, buying a book on C++ and converting it to Obj-C would be a fast
way of accruing a lot of algorithms, but it's still not going to teach
them Objective-C.
My advice to the original poster is similar to other posters:
[1] Learn C, using any of the plethora of C books, eg the Kernighan &
Ritchie "The C Programming Language" book (they invented C). Whichever
book you buy, make sure it's ANSI C compliant. Most modern books should
be, but second hand books may not be.
[2] Read the "Object Oriented Programming and the Objective-C Language"
PDF in the Apple dev docs
[3] Work through the Apple sample Cocoa code (eg. Currency Converter, the
Movie one etc.) to introduce you to some of the Cocoa frameworks.
[4] Buy Learning Cocoa if you want to familiarise yourself <cough> with
the Cocoa frameworks & API once you're familiar with the Obj-C language.
C++ indeed...
Have a good weekend,
the boy Ken
----------------------------------------------
Ken Tabb
Mac & UNIX Propellerhead & Network Bloke (Health & Human Sciences)
Computer Vision / Neural Network researcher (Computer Science)
University of Hertforfdshire
e-mail: email@hidden
http://www.health.herts.ac.uk/ken/
Certified non-Microsoft Solution Provider