Re: Getting started with cocoa
Re: Getting started with cocoa
- Subject: Re: Getting started with cocoa
- From: mmalcolm crawford <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 15:35:29 -0700
On Apr 12, 2004, at 5:10 AM, Ben Dougall wrote:
On Monday, April 12, 2004, at 12:52 pm, John Nowak wrote:
On Apr 12, 2004, at 5:03 AM, mmalcolm crawford wrote:
If you need an introduction to C programming, this does it from the
perspective of Obj-C:
I suggest getting a book on C first, as having a firm grasp on working
on things from the angle of creating functions instead of objects its
worthwhile (critical even).
I disagree. Getting to grips with dealing with objects, and sending
messages, is critical. If that's the first thing you learn, great.
There's also a lot of stuff regarding C that I bet that book passes
up on (making use of case fallthrough (yes, its a good thing!),
giving a proper library function reference, explaining pointer
arithmetic (useful at least so you can read source code from others,
etc). Of course, I never read it... just guessing. :-)
Umm, so please don't give misleading comments on the basis of ignorance
-- the book does indeed cover all these issues and more.
Knowing C very, very well is much more important than knowing
Objective-C anywhere else except Mac OS X.
Conversely, if your goal is to develop applications in Cocoa, then a
knowledge of Objective-C and appreciation of how objects work is more
important. Since Cocoa provides you with a number of useful
abstractions, many have found that they can develop their "deep"
understanding of C on an as-needed basis. You certainly do not need to
be a C wizard before being able to achieve anything useful in Cocoa.
Cocoa Programming you might not need if you don't plan on hauling out
the
serious Cocoa power, but Cocoa Recipes doesn't even tough on things
like outline views, and forget it if you want to do something that
isn't as simple as a drag and drop in Interface Builder.
Bill's book goes considerably beyond applications that are "as simple
as a drag and drop in Interface Builder".
this'd be worth having a look at: "Programming in Objective-C" by
Stephen Kochan.
Yes, that was the book I referenced...
haven't read it myself but i know it teaches objective-c, *including
c*. it isn't one of those books that says at the start "go and learn c
before you read this".
It certainly is possible to learn C and Cocoa at the same time -- I
did, and I know others who did. It's more difficult if you have *no*
programming experience at all, but if you have the rudiments
(structure, variables etc.) from another language then it's easier.
mmalc
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