Best Cocoa/Obj. C Book

spiffster

I'm getting $100 bucks to spend for Christmas. I'm reading a book on ANSI C (no other programming expierence) and am half way through it. After i get a good handel on C I want to move to Cocoa/Obj. C. I plan to get a Cocoa/Obj. C book with the money. Any recommendations on which one to get?



I use BBEdit Lite for coding, and gcc for compiling. I don't think ill make use of BBEdit Pro, so i wont need that. Anything else i could get to help me out? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

kecksy

I would recomend <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learncocoa2/"; target="_blank">Learning Cocoa with Objective C.</a>



Oreilly makes some of the best programing books around and this particular one covers the newest features in Jaguar. Plus, Apple is the co-author.

spart

If you'd like to check out or get more than one book, definitely take a look at Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hileglass (did I get his name right?) He was one of the creators of Cocoa, so he knows his stuff.

kickaha

Hillegass' book is *excellent* for getting up and running with making rather full featured apps with a breadth of topics, while Scott Anguish et al's book on Cocoa Programming is an amazing reference book for sheer depth of material.



Haven't read the O'Reilly book, but if it's the one that Apple originally produced, I've heard not so great things about it in comparison to the above two.

splinemodel

The O'Reilly book is good for people like me who just can't get used to Object oriented stuff. It's starts at a very basic level. The other two assume a better time-zero knowledge of the material.



Anyway, for reasons made obvious by the last paragraph I ended up dumping Cocoa for Carbon most of the time. Carbon forever!



Other things to help you out:

Developer Tools CD. Know it, love it.



There are a lot of help files that will be installed on your HD if you install the Dev Tools CD. They contain a lot of material about Cocoa and Carbon.



[ 12-04-2002: Message edited by: Splinemodel ]</p>

rick1138

Don't give up on OO,once you get it,you'll hate using anything that isn't OO.

spiffster

Do any of these books give code examples along with the material? Because I like to type in pre-made examples to get the jist of things.

macserverx

I'm a student in search of a Christmas present and may be interested in getting an ADC Membership. I have no programming experience but do have good experience in HTML and minor experience in AppleScript/Studio. Is signing up for ADC with no experience worth it?

josef k.

[quote]Originally posted by Spiffster:

<strong>Do any of these books give code examples along with the material? Because I like to type in pre-made examples to get the jist of things.</strong><hr></blockquote>



The full source from the O'Reilly <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/buildcocoa/"; target="_blank">Building Cocoa Applications</a> book can be found <a href="http://examples.oreilly.com/buildcocoa/buildcocoa_examples.tar.gz"; target="_blank">here</a>, and the source from <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learncocoa2/"; target="_blank">Learning Cocoa with Objective C</a> can be found <a href="http://examples.oreilly.com/learncocoa2/LearningCocoa.dmg"; target="_blank">here</a>.



And, once you've got a grip on ANSI C, you must read the excellent <a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Cocoa/ObjectiveC/ObjC.pdf"; target="_blank">Objective C book</a> from Apple's own <a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Cocoa/CocoaTopics.html"; target="_blank">Cocoa developer page</a>. It will introduce you to object-oriented programming in general, and Objective C in particular. Very well written book.



The Hillegass book is also very good. You might want to get the Hillegass book, together with one of the O'Reilly books. I suspect the book by Scott Anguish, et. al. might be too advanced for beginners, but I've not read it yet so I really can't comment.



A good overview of available books can be found <a href="http://www.stepwise.com/Bookstore.html"; target="_blank">here</a>.



Carbon? "Mum, Dad! Don't touch it! It's pure concentrated evil!"

spiffster

[quote]Originally posted by Splinemodel:

<strong>The O'Reilly book is good for people like me who just can't get used to Object oriented stuff. </strong><hr></blockquote>



Which O'Reilly book? Learning Cocoa with Obj. C or Building cocoa applications?

overtoasty

[quote]Originally posted by Kecksy:

<strong>I would recomend <a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learncocoa2/"; target="_blank">Learning Cocoa with Objective C.</a>



Oreilly makes some of the best programing books around and this particular one covers the newest features in Jaguar. Plus, Apple is the co-author.</strong><hr></blockquote>



... normally I'd agree with you, O'Reilly usually makes books of the standard against which all others should be judged ... but not this time unfortunately - they seemed very rushed with their first Cocoa book, so the book is pretty much a rehash of some of the old on-line Apple docs.



I have both the original O'Reilly book (is there now 2?) and Hillegass'... and everybody I've met who has experience with both (myself included) says Hillegass' book is much better.



Heck you might even be able to use it to actually LEARN something?



It's nice that at least some computer books are judged more by their ability to teach than by their ability to mimic a dictionary at $50+ a pop.

rick1138

Building Cocoa Applications is great,I've read it and done all the tutorials,it's not well known but I recommend it.