Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
- Subject: Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
- From: Brent Gulanowski <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 17:30:18 -0400
On Friday, October 11, 2002, at 04:44 PM, Brian E. Howard wrote:
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.
No argument with the facts here...
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
... but what is with all this "learn C++" first business? Honestly,
what is so difficult about learning OOP via Objective-C? I read Apple's
book and it helped me get an A in my Smalltalk/C++ course without even
trying. I think the problem is that people are trying to learn too much
at once, plain and simple. You don't have to learn AppKit right out of
the gate. Write a command line tool in Obj-C and mess around with a few
Foundation classes. No requirement to learn other junk and slow you
down even more. And then one can practise the discipline without the
distraction of the machinery of an event model and all the
complications, which have nothing to do with OOP at all. Once someone
has a feel for OOP and the language, *then* they can graduate to
Responder chains, view hierarchies, action methods, interface palettes,
nibs, the document architecture, notifications and on and on and on.
See how much less complicated it is when you put that stuff on hold and
just look at the essentials?
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!
I can't begin to tell you how much I agree with this. Apple, however,
would rather get grandma to buy an iMac then win over the hordes of
hobbyist programmers out there just dying for a better way to do it.
Personally, I hope the community will eventually pick up that ball; you
can't put your faith in Apple.
--
Brent Gulanowski email@hidden
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