It's the details was: Re: *That* book
It's the details was: Re: *That* book
- Subject: It's the details was: Re: *That* book
- From: Chris Gehlker <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 08:22:29 -0700
On 9/27/01 12:17 AM, "Drew McCormack" <email@hidden> wrote:
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I've almost got through the "Learning Cocoa" book now, and what everyone
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is saying is basically right: it is no masterpiece.
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But I do think it is easier to follow a book from cover to cover than
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find online tutorials and be disiplined enough to complete them all. If
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nothing else, the book gives your some focus, and I have learnt a lot
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from it, no question. I hope O'Reilly improve upon it though.
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I am also looking forward to the Addison Wesley book coming in November.
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My experience with their books has been excellent: "Effective C++" and
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"More Effective C++" are amongst the best books for C++ I have seen, and
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"Design Patterns" is an out and out classic. (By the way, if you haven't
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read "Design Patterns", do. It is extremely relevant to Cocoa, and
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regularly references NeXTSTEP.)
As one of the readers who first criticized "Learning Cocoa" It's been
interesting to see all the responses. I was especially interested in Bill
Cheeseman's defense of the book, since I find the "Vermont Recipes" to be
altogether a much better introduction to Cocoa.
I don't really think the level of detail or the overall structure of the
books is that bad. I do think the devil is in the details and that "Learning
Cocoa" gets too many of the details wrong.
The book rightly emphasizes the benefits of using static typing wherever
possible but doesn't consistently practice what it preaches in the code
examples. Some of the sample programs have crashing bugs. There are errata
sheets posted on O'Rielly's site that will eliminate the crashing bugs but
they don't eliminate running bugs such as the way the ToDo app blanks the
first task in any day when the insertion point is in any other task.
It's just the attitude of "We couldn't be bothered to test our code." that
was really disappointing in a book from a publisher of O'Rielly's
reputation.
--
Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
-Mignon McLaughlin, author