Cocoa recommended reading
- Thread starter mw84
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There are some tutorials over at http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/ , you could always start there. You can also check out tutorials over at http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/ct/37 as well, which is run by O'Reilly, the tech book publisher.
Aaron Hillegaas' book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is highly regarded as well. There's two editions so make sure to get the 2nd edition as that one's more up to date as it deals with bindings which was introduced in Panther. I bought the 1st edition when it came out and that helped me quite a bit.
Aaron Hillegaas' book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is highly regarded as well. There's two editions so make sure to get the 2nd edition as that one's more up to date as it deals with bindings which was introduced in Panther. I bought the 1st edition when it came out and that helped me quite a bit.
Mikuro
Crotchety UI Nitpicker
http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?HowToProgramInOSX A great site, and that index in particular was invaluable to me when I was first learning. That, MacDevCenter, and Apple's built-in documentation are the only materials I've ever used. However, I already had years of programming experience when I started learning Cocoa. You'll probably want to read up a bit on C first.
But I can't really recommend any books, since I've never been much a book person when it comes to this kind of thing (I can't take books about computers seriously, because I feel like the only reason books still exist is for people who can't use computers
). There are some good articles on MacDevCenter, though, like C is For Cocoa.
But I can't really recommend any books, since I've never been much a book person when it comes to this kind of thing (I can't take books about computers seriously, because I feel like the only reason books still exist is for people who can't use computers
). There are some good articles on MacDevCenter, though, like C is For Cocoa.Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
If you don't know C, and you're serious about learning Cocoa, you'll want to get a book on C definitely.
If you don't know C, and you're serious about learning Cocoa, you'll want to get a book on C definitely.
Mikuro
Crotchety UI Nitpicker
Actually, Cocoa and Carbon are not languages they are APIs. You access these APIs through some programming language. In the case of Cocoa, you access it with Objective-C, which is a superset of C. Objective-C is just like C, only with additions for handling object-oriented programming.
Most APIs are accessible through more than one language. There are several bridges available that let you write Cocoa programs in other languages besides Objective-C. Apple includes a Java bridge in XCode, and I've seen some for Ruby and I think Python, too. But Objective-C is sort of the "native" language of Cocoa (for lack of a better term).
I hope this clears it up a bit. I especially hope I haven't made it even more confusing. The relationship between Xcode, Cocoa and Objective-C is often misunderstood.
Most APIs are accessible through more than one language. There are several bridges available that let you write Cocoa programs in other languages besides Objective-C. Apple includes a Java bridge in XCode, and I've seen some for Ruby and I think Python, too. But Objective-C is sort of the "native" language of Cocoa (for lack of a better term).
I hope this clears it up a bit. I especially hope I haven't made it even more confusing. The relationship between Xcode, Cocoa and Objective-C is often misunderstood.