Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
- Subject: Re: Cocoa Books (was New to Cocoa)
- From: mmalcolm crawford <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:52:24 -0700
On Friday, October 11, 2002, at 01:44 PM, Brian E. Howard wrote:
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++
This is something of a strawman.
Yes, I think it would be excellent if someone could put together such a
course, and I suspect that Cocoa would provide a great environment for
learning OOP from scratch (and I have heard rumours that Apple has been
trying to encourage CS departments to use Cocoa in their programmes.
However:
(a) I do not think this is Apple's responsibility (this is a course
which would probably last many weeks);
(b) Nevertheless, Apple's (nor Aaron's) course does *not* "first
require obtaining a degree in computer science followed by several
years of experience is some lesser alleged object oriented language".
A knowledge of the basics of C, and the fundamentals of OOP are all
that are required. The sort of experience you should have after about
the first semester or so of a good CS programme.
[...]
Cocoa should be easier to learn than C++ or C# or Java, not harder!
In many respects it is. Java wins out in some of the *early* stages
because newcomers don't have to worry about memory management.
Later:
No doubt you are right, but that is not necessarily the perception out
here in the world.
Maybe the world's perception is biased...?
And it is not being taught as if it were relatively easy, at least not
from my admittedly biased perspective.
Some of it is difficult, some of it is easy. Some of it is easy once
you've got over a mental hurdle. I'm not sure, though, in what sense
you mean it's "not being taught as if it were relatively easy"?
By the way: if you could somehow put yourself into a beginner's shoes
Try putting yourself back in a beginner's shoes, and try to remember
how difficult it perhaps was to understand "File's Owner", and how easy
it now seems. Some people get the concept immediately, others struggle.
Let me put it another way: Cocoa should be easier than learning C
itself.
If you're talking about, say, learning how to put a window on screen,
then yes, Cocoa is easier, but as a general statement, sorry, that's
just silly. Cocoa is a "superset" of C, so there's no way it could be
easier.
mmalc
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