Re: Best beginner's book
Re: Best beginner's book
- Subject: Re: Best beginner's book
- From: Jim Jaeger <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 21:38:43 -0800
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 11:43:18 -0500
Subject: Best beginner's book
From: "Susan G. Conger" <email@hidden>
To: email@hidden
I have been a Mac developer for over 15 years and I am trying to pick
up Cocoa. I have Learning Cocoa from O'Reilly but I don't really like
it. I am looking for suggestions on what the best book is for
beginners.
I'm a beginner at Cocoa and essentially a beginner at programming,
having last programmed seriously about twenty years ago.
I bought and tried _Learning_Cocoa from O'Reilly. I gave up on that
book at page 147. Maybe it was too dense for me--or I was too dense for
that book. Someday, I'll probably try it again.
I bought and worked my way through _Cocoa_Programming_for_Mac_OSX from
Addison Wessley. I found Hillegass's writing style more to my liking
than _Learning... I had the feeling that Hillegass not only knew what
he was writing about, but he was having fun while he did it. The book
was worth the price, and the result worth the effort.
At the moment, I'm at page 476 (of about 600 pp.) while working through
_Building_Cocoa_Applications_ from O'Reilly. My feeling is that this
book was rushed to press. I'm gratified that Hillegass's book was
published first, because I think the errors in _Building... would have
frustrated me, if it had been first. Garfield and Mahoney need to get a
second edition on the market before I would recommend their book. That
said, as an experienced programmer, you might be able to tolerate the
errors that we less current folks can't. I printed the errata for
_Learning... (about 24 pages) and find that, so far, I can work my way
through a problem (I've been stymied for two days at p.476, though),
but it's not a credit to the book to have to do this. The book is, on
the other hand, a deeper look into Cocoa than the Hillegass book.
In summary: The Hillegass book is where I think a beginner should
start, but an experienced programmer might be able to tolerate the
Garfield and Mahoney book. _Learning_Cocoa_ may be a worthwhile
reference book, someday.
If it's important to you, neither _Building_Cocoa... or
_Cocoa_Programming_ fell apart in my hands when I tried to use them, as
_Learning_Cocoa_ did.
jim
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