Re: Best beginner's book
Re: Best beginner's book
- Subject: Re: Best beginner's book
- From: Chuck Toporek <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 02:57:04 -0500
Just a question:
Are you referring to "Learning Cocoa" -- the first edition published in
May 2000 -- or "Learning Cocoa with Objective-C" -- the second edition
published in September 2002
(
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learncocoa2/)?
Chuck
On Friday, January 10, 2003, at 12:38 AM, Jim Jaeger wrote:
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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