Re: Learning Mac programming (Cocoa)
Re: Learning Mac programming (Cocoa)
- Subject: Re: Learning Mac programming (Cocoa)
- From: Danny Swarzman <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 01:12:45 -0700
You can't skimp on understanding C. You need to know the whole language.
Fortunately, it's not that big. Also if you know Pascal, it's not a hard
leap. It's worth it to get a copy of "The C Programming Language", 2nd
edition by Kernighan and Ritchie. It is the only book on C you will ever
need. Everything is said twice so you only need the first 190 pages, not
even all of them. The book was published in 1988 and can be found used.
At 0:00 -0700 8/1/03, David Thorp wrote:
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Thank you very much to everyone who has responded to my previous post
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"Learning Mac Programming".
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>
I now have a couple more specific questions based on what you've all
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said. (The following are my questions specifically about cocoa. I've
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written another similar email to the webobjects list about my
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webobjects questions).
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But first, here's what I think I've learned from all of you:
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Cocoa: isn't a language but a set of API's for making Mac OS X
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development much easier than otherwise. There is a wealth of info
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online for learning cocoa but to make any sense of that, I need to know
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at least one of a number of things, but for desktop apps, Objective-C
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is the most popular.
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(I want to pursue Java at some time because of my interest in
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WebObjects and exploring cross platform apps later, but one thing at a
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time).
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But initially for Cocoa, I'll need to know...
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Objective-C: Apple has what seems to be an excellent tutorial
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<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/
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index.html>. I'm very impressed with it, and happy that it'll be
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enough at least for starters.
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But to make any sense of that, I'll need to know...
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>
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C: or at least a basic knowledge of C. Apparently I don't need a
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thorough knowledge of C. That's good news.
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For what it's worth, a couple of you made the distinction between
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learning a language and learning good programming techniques. I
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thoroughly learnt Pascal at Sydney University a few years ago. It
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wasn't so much a Pascal course as using Pascal to teach good
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programming techniques. I came close to the top of that class, and so
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am pretty confident that I've got good programming techniques down. I
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just need to learn the languages etc. (though I'm certainly open to
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improvement) :-)
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Now... Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions for books, though I'm
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pretty low on $$ at the moment. I've been reading through
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"http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2003/07/22/cocoa_series.html"; ("C
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is for Cocoa") as suggested by a couple of you and found that a great
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start, but it's only one article among many (that haven't been written
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yet).
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So my questions are:...
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1. Does anyone know of any other online tutorials that will teach me
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enough C to then get through Apple's Obj-C tutorial or other like it?
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What would be especially good is if such a tutorial was able to tell me
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what I need to know for moving on to objective C and cocoa rather than
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just teaching me everything, without helping sift for me. Know what I
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mean?
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2. Someone did suggest that learning Java from scratch is as easy or
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easier than C, and is a good way into Cocoa development too. What are
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the pros and cons of using Java instead of Obj-C for desktop app
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programming on Mac OS X with Cocoa?
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Thanks again, in advance for any further help and advice.
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Cheers!
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David Thorp.
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Sydney/Brisbane, Australia.
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