Re: Learning Cocoa Book - the problem
Re: Learning Cocoa Book - the problem
- Subject: Re: Learning Cocoa Book - the problem
- From: Matt Judy <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 12:29:37 -0700
- Organization: Apple
Hi,
Eric Doggett wrote:
>
>
The problem I see with the book is that ... it haphazardly/rarely
>
describes to you what the code means ... there's no follow up!
>
>
Eric
This has always been my biggest gripe with Cocoa documentation. The docs thoroughly
explain the syntax of Obj-C, and make the basics of object-oriented design pretty clear to
the beginning user with C experience.
The example code is also well written, but there is little or no explanation of what that
code means. You're left to figure it out on your own, a task that the beginner is
ill-equipped to do. Once you've got your head wrapped around OO design, Obj-C code
becomes "self-documenting", but most Cocoa beginners haven't reached that point yet, and
C++ users already have a definition of 'object-oriented' that is very different from the
Cocoa concept.
But the problem is that *all* Cocoa books seem to be written this way. I believe it is
because once you've reached the point where you are skilled enough to write a book about
Cocoa, it's very difficult to remember what it was like to be a beginner. Maybe what we
need is for a beginner to write a Cocoa book, starting from day one and explaining what
he/she learns over time from all these books and from others, a diary which distills and
translates the various resources into a book that advances with the beginning Cocoa programmer.
It would take a while to write, but I'd buy a copy.
--
Matt Judy
Senior Engineer + ATC + APP
/Apple/Applications/Internet/iTools
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