Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
- Subject: Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
- From: "Brian E. Howard" <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:44:42 -0400
On Friday, October 11, 2002, at 03:12 PM, Aaron Hillegass wrote:
>
First off, no one is getting rich writing Cocoa books. An author of
>
a computer book gets about $3 per copy sold, and the Cocoa community
>
is not huge (I doubt that any of us will sell even 15,000 copies.)
>
<big snip>
>
Given all the books on Cocoa that the world needs (An advanced book?
>
A book for total beginners?
Then Donald Brown wrote:
On a mac community where I'm active (spymac.com), there are lots of
people
looking for a "Learn C and Objective C on the Macintosh". Not for
anyone on
this list, I'm sure, but there are those with zero knowledge who would
love
to get into programming.
To which I add my $.02:
I suspect that a really well written beginners book on Cocoa would
outsell all the current books put together. Probably by a factor of
two or three! And then the happy author would have a ready market for
the intermediate and advanced books that would form a much needed set.
Hell, it might take five or six volumes by the time we beginners were
up to where Aaron's book was any real competition, let alone the tome
from Anguish, et al.
If Apple, or someone, would put out a really well written and
comprehensive course in programming for the Mac with Cocoa, a course
that did not first require obtaining a degree in computer science
followed by several years of experience is some lesser alleged object
oriented language like the kluge known as C++ . . . then Apple could
"own" the next generation of programmers. Let the kids who love to
play with hardware build their PC "Boxen": with OS X running real Unix
under the hood, lust-worthy iApps and developer tools free, and the
coolness factor of owning a Mac, the Dell Dude notwithstanding, Apple
has a real opportunity to advance in the education market where it
counts the most--tomorrows programmers, nursed and nurtured with Cocoa,
who would refuse to imbibe any lessor brew a decade from now! Too late
for this old cooter, but there are tens of thousands of bright kids out
there wasting their time with crap like RealBasic, or dealing with the
Dark Side because Cocoa looks too hard. Everyone warns of the steep
learning curve; but the only reason it is so steep is because
_everyone_ insists on the degree and experience first. Cocoa should be
easier to learn than C++ or C# or Java, not harder!
Sorry, that turned out to be $.25 worth of rant.
Brian E. Howard
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