Re: Serious Questions
Re: Serious Questions
- Subject: Re: Serious Questions
- From: David Remahl <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 22:50:21 +0200
I do not understand how a person is supposed to get started with Cocoa
when there is little, and very often NO documentation for even the
simplest things. I just dragged over a pop-up button to try and figure
out how that might work--not actually connecting it to anything, but
just to see if I could get it working on an interface level--but after
thirty minutes of looking everywhere I could think of I'm still at a
complete loss. The inspector window went away and I could not figure
out how to get it back. Searching Interface Builder's "Help" found
ZERO hits for "inspector"! Now that's scary. The only thing I got to
work was changing the names of the three choices offered. But how do I
reduce that to only 2 choices? Or increase it to 4 or 5 items? Every
time I turn around someone is touting Cocoa as an easy thing to learn.
For whom, I wonder?
IMHO there is *lots* of documentation of Cocoa and Interface Builder.
Things you need:
1) working knowledge of C
2) basic understanding of Object Oriented Programming
Then you can use the introduction to Objective-C apple provides you with
on the CD (somewhere in /Developer/Documentation/)
Once you understand Objective C, get on to one of the basic tutorials
(eg. currency converter). From there you can probably create a very
basic application. There is extensive (though bitwise a somewhat
lacking) documentation of all the classes in Cocoa in subfo.lders of
/Developer/Documentation/Cocoa/Reference etc...
If I'm the problem then it must be that I don't have sufficient
background because I just had a full battery of cognitive tests and I'm
still a pretty smart guy. Damn smart, in fact. So is a couple of
courses 25 years ago in Fortran and a little TeX macro writing in the
meantime way too little to start from? Do I need to sell my shack here
in the Northern woods and move someplace where there are a few Gurus I
can hang out with and maybe pick something up that way? Buy a few
rounds? Do I need a goat, or will a chicken be sufficient sacrifice?
If I go to the dark side will I find the same problem there?
Hmm, juding by this paragraph you are rather childish...
Or is Apple giving the developer's tools disk to everyone who buys a
retail copy of OS X just a PR stunt? If I hang in there will this
dismal situation improve? Are the documentation floodgates soon to be
opened?
There is lots of documentation, if you just look for it. However, just
because PB/IB is included, you do not magically get the ability to write
and understand C...Including the Developer CD was a very nice thing to
do, but those who cant use it shouldn't...
Finally, is it really okay to ask low-level questions in this forum?
Because I have a ton of them! Or should I just give this up and start
a Cocoa Cult list for the hoards of wannabes like me? Sorry for being
so flip, but it's the only way I know how to avoid screaming!
It is perfectly OK to ask any question here, as long as you maintain
some level of style, and try to search the archives of omni and apple
before asking something that might have been answered before.
/ david