Re: Beginner with Objective-C was Re: scanf...?
Re: Beginner with Objective-C was Re: scanf...?
- Subject: Re: Beginner with Objective-C was Re: scanf...?
- From: Erik Buck <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 12:45:07 -0700 (PDT)
Everyone has to start somewhere. I started writing BASIC programs on 8-bit computers using trial and error to see what worked. I looked around and realized that the software I liked (GAMES) was rather obviously not written in BASIC. The only other development system available on those 8-bit computers was assembly language. Therefore, I made the jump from BASIC to assembly language.
When I first encountered C, I thought it was a nice macro assembler. The esoteric features of C like bit fields, arithmetic shifts, binary operators, language support for hexadecimal and octal constants, pointer arithmetic, pointers to functions, etc. are absolutely natural and obvious to someone who is an accomplished assembly language programmer.
There are lots of different types of application in the world, and I suppose the vast majority of programmers do not need to know what a register is or how functions are called or even what a pointer is. I also agree that people have to start somewhere, and the Cocoa version of Hello World might be a multi-document application with spell checking, undo, input validation, and a full blown database. [the minimal Core Data application : )]
However, Cocoa programmers do eventually need to learn C because they will inevitably encounter C code like the example I copied from Apples documentation. If you limit yourself to the subset of Cocoa that is accessible without a deeper understanding (groking) of C, you will never be able to develop serious applications.
I think the only difference between my thinking and the others in this thread is that I am saying programmers must eventually learn C fully and others are emphasizing that you dont have to already know C fully to write any kind of Cocoa application at all. As long as we agree that groking C is ultimately necessary to use Cocoa, I agree that it is not immediately needed.
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