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Programming in Objective-C :: 0672325861
Description
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Programming in Objective-C is a concise, carefully written tutorial on the basics of Objective-C and object-oriented programming. The book makes no assumption about prior experience with object-oriented programming languages or with the C language (upon which Objective-C is based). And because of this, both novice and experienced programmers alike can use this book to quickly and effectively learn the fundamentals of Objective-C. Readers can also learn the concepts of object-oriented programming without having to first learn all of the intricacies of the underlying procedural language (C). This approach, combined with many small program examples and exercises at the end of each chapter, makes it ideally suited for either classroom use or self-study. Growth is expected in this language. At the January 2003 MacWorld, it was announced that there are 5 million Mac OS X users and each of their boxes ships with Objective-C built in. Editorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact us if you are one of them, and wish to change the above description. |
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Author: Guest
New Mac computers come with a full suite of excellent objective-c programming tools called Xcode. This book is a great way for inexperienced programmers to learn ObjC without feeling overwhelmed. When I first decided I wanted to take up programming for the Mac, I was concerned that I would feel overwhelmed with arcane terminlogy and confusing explanations. I was very gratified to start into this book with no programming experience other than old school apple //c Basic and be able to write simple programs right from the start. That instills a sense of confidence that I think is essential to success in learning. The author makes sure that you understand what each line of code is for and you never feel like you're typing something that you don't understand.
I purchased this book as a bundle with "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass. I actually cracked that book first and successfully programmed my first example program. However in chapter 3 he writes "..this chapter assumes that you already know a little C and something about objects..". Since I have no C experience at all and only know about objects as "things", I put that book down and started with "Programming in Objective-C." I'm glad I did. This book focuses more on learning objective-C and touches only a little bit on how to use Xcode. Once I get further along I'm sure that the Hillegass book will be an excellent book for me to learn from.
If you're looking for 2 books to get you started in programming Objective-C, I would highly recommend the 2 book bundle.
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Author: Guest
This is THE place to start learning to program for OSX. Other books are more comprehensive, and deal w/ the GUI interface integration, and they are important too. However, if you want to learn how to program for the Mac, don't get a C book, just get this one. Then you will be ready to learn from other "Cocoa" books. I am just beginning to teach myself Cocoa (and programming in general), and I was pretty lost w/ the whole thing until I got this book. I can't reiterate it enough-- This is THE place to start for the novice programmer interested in programming Cocoa.
As far as the book itself goes. It is very well written, examples are clear, and the author does not assume you've mastered a concept simply because he mentioned it in a previous chapter (a problem w/ many of the other intro books out there). The pacing seems appropriate, and the examples are clear. Another reviewer mentioned the bit operation section as being difficult, and I also didn't really get it myself. However, the good news is that you don't use these operations in Cocoa except in very rare circumstances, so as a novice, you can just ignore that stuff. If you bought any of the other intro to Cocoa books and gave up, buy this, and you'll be able to understand the others better.
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Author: Guest
Here was my post to the cocoa-dev mailing list (slightly updated as it's a year old):
FROM : Steven Harms
DATE : Thu Jul 29 01:03:34 2004
...[W]e are both in the early stages of learning Cocoa and would like to apply our experiences in other languages to make learning Cocoa easy.
Part of the heuristic of 'how to learn' starts with an editor, a
compiler, and "here is how you declare a variable" - we then move toconditionals, loops, objects etc. Without that education I felt very naked in the O'Reilly books.
I read the first 15 chapters or so of Stephen Kochan's _Programming in Objective-C_ by SAMS press. I am now going through Hillegass' book and am very pleased (outside of the mail i sent moments ago!).
Kochan's book gives enough familiarity in the basics to demystify a lot of the Cocoa work -- Hillegass does a very good job in building up the basics. I would recommend this path to the absolute beginner.
Steven
....
I stand by this post in a very serious way. I really love ObjC just for itself. I'm thinking about teaching my girlfriend how to program, and I'm definitely thinking about using Objective C because it is regular, sensible, modular, OO, and a lot of fun.
It's amazing just how cool ObjC is. It's really quite too bad that most of the Cocoa books (which is why you're really looking at this book, isn't it?) just kinda slap things around loosley with respect to nailing down the essentials of the Objective C language.
I guess they figure they've got to get us to Interface Builder quickly or else our TV-eroded sense of instant gratification kicks in and turns their book into a doorstop (if that's the case, do you /really/ have any business being a programmer?)
In any case, the only ORA press book that does anything considerable with the ObjC foundation is Davidson's book but then the example is fairly trivial (a CD database) and some of the fundamental primitives of the programming language are not even broached.
This foundation is where Kochan excels. Contrary to other reviewers I love that he teaches from a text editor + compiler approach. I think that the Xtools that apple provides makes writing Cocoa a bit *too* easy. As a result I don't really understand what I'm doing. Much like a child who has learned a series of signs and expressions and can utter them, the mental clay has not been marked with the meaning of those symbols.
If you want to learn Cocoa, I still say put away XTools and ORA press (as good as they are at most other things). Start with Kochan, (vim|emacs), and gcc and get your basics down. From there you'll have an excellent foundation and won't be confused / irritated / baffled by "unexplained magic" that appears in other cocoa books.
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Author: Guest
Without teaching optional APIs, Kochan gently guides the reader into Objective-C. The best part? There is no prior C programming knowledge required. Well written, fairly well edited, this is a great introduction to Objective-C. I highly recommend this book.
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Author: Guest
Chapter 3, “Classes, Objects, and Methods,” pretty much cleared up all the confusion I've ever had about object oriented programming. I can’t believe how simple it is to understand once I got over the mental hurdle of object-class-inheritance-method OOP stuff. Actually, it quite reminds me of something one of my ECE 264 instructors tried to teach: separating the interface from the implementation. In this case we were building a library of functions to deal with complex numbers. In OOP parlance, we would have defined a ComplexNumber class, defined its methods, and implemented the methods available to the class.Anyhowways, if you're new to programming and interested in developing for Mac OS X, I highly recommend picking it up. It doesn't cover all the GUI stuff, but it will give you a very good foundation of the underlying concepts of OOP and excellent coding tips.
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