Re: Learning Cocoa
Re: Learning Cocoa
- Subject: Re: Learning Cocoa
- From: Michael Rogers <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 21:25:43 -0500
On Thursday, May 31, 2001, at 01:13 PM, email@hidden wrote:
Any other "Newbies" here who are as disappointed with the long-awaited
"Learning Cocoa" book from O'Reilly as I am? Or not so new, for that
matter. What I've seen so far--Chapter One--is little more than a
"Reader's Digest" version of "Object-Oriented Programming and the
Objective-C Language." Indeed, this shortened version is nothing but
sales hype, on-and-on about how great Cocoa is. HELLO, APPLE: I went
into debt to buy a G4, and spent hundreds more for books and ADC
mailings-- just to do Cocoa. More to the point: I bought THIS bloody
book, so why the hell are you still trying to sell it to me? I
understand the power of Cocoa, I'm already a BIG fan. Now, how the
#@$%*# do I go about really learning how to use it? Oh, wait, now I
see the ever-popular "Hello World" and "Currency Converter" coming up
fast. Sorry, been there, done that. I hope to hell the second half
has something truly valuable in it, or this book is going to have to be
renamed "Learning Cocoa, NOT".
But *all* books trying to get people to switch
paradigms/languages/whatever start off with the introductory marketing
chapter. Look at the Java Tutorial, for instance: Sun doesn't tone down
its enthusiasm, why should Apple? As far as repeating "Hello World" and
"Currency Converter", Learning Cocoa's target audience clearly includes
those who haven't any Objective-C experience, and for whom this is
therefore all brand new. Hello World is only 5-6 pages, anyway, and
provides an introduction to PB and IB. They'd be crazy to omit that,
IMHO, because that's what makes Cocoa so much fun!
The second half most definitely has something valuable in it. I'm up to
chapter 10 and the examples are uniformly well done -- just the right
length, clearly coded and annotated.
I *do* wish that there was more in the book -- but perhaps "Mastering
Cocoa" is in the works, and here's hoping that other authors are firing
up their word processors as we speak. In the meantime, between this
book, the on-line API reference, and most importantly the other people
on this list, I'm finding the learning curve for Cocoa much shallower
than, say, PowerPlant. Once I get memory management figured out, I'll
be home free...
Just my $0.0135 (that's C$0.02, regettably :-)
Michael
------------------------------
Dr. Michael P. Rogers
Mathematics & Computer Science, Millikin University
email@hidden
http://math.millikin.edu/mprogers
217-424-6327(W) 309-828-8655 (H) 309-825-6454(C)