Re: New Cocoa Programmer
Re: New Cocoa Programmer
- Subject: Re: New Cocoa Programmer
- From: David Remahl <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 15:19:31 +0100
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Personally, I think it is crap, but your mileage may vary! Since the book
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came out I'd say about 2/3s of the commentators on this list find serious
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fault, while the other third don't seem to think it's _that_ bad. Again,
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personally, and from the prospective of a beginner
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with only one semester of Fortran 25 years ago to start with, there is
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NOTHING that I can recommend. So far, the emphasis is on getting
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experienced programmers up to speed; no one, including Apple, has seen fit
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to try and explicate Cocoa for beginners. The assumption is that you
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already have a degree in Computer Science and at least five years
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experience in something like Java or C++ under your belt. A guy like that
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is what they call a "Newbie" around here. On the surface this seems to
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make good sense in that Apple is desperate for actual "Native" programs
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for OS X; on the other hand it is extremely short-sighted in that the
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theory that only experienced programmer--sorry, software engineers--are
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actually able to write worthwhile programs is a gross contradiction of the
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hype about Cocoa, especially using Objective-C, and. just plain wrong.
Brian,
I do not have a five year CS degree (although I'm hoping of getting one). I
have a hobbyists experience of C/C++, RealBASIC, Basic, VisualBasic, Java
and a few other languages with several different API's and frameworks, and
of all languages I have learnt, Objective-C and Cocoa was by far the easiest
to absorb. Within a week of experimenting, I was up to speed and able to do
the most part of what I could previously do with PowerPlant, C++ and the Mac
Toolbox (or realbasic, for that matter...).
Now, that is the case for every new language one learns (computer or
human)...The more of a similar sort you have before, the easier it is to
learn. What I think most people trying to learn cocoa ar missing, is the
object oriented theory (smalltalk) and the C ground to stand on. Without
those it is impossible to learn Cocoa and Objective-C efficently. It cannot
be expected that Apple should teach users C, nor OOP.
/ david