Newbie Help

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minim

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Hey everyone, just registered a few minutes ago. I know nothing about programming other than the fact that it's really cool and I want to learn it as fast as I humanly can. I'd really like to chat with anyone willing since I have a lot of questions about it (I have AIM, by the way). I've posted a few basic questions below -- any help is greatly appreciated.

Which is the better programming language to start out with? Which langauge offers more control and versatility?

Which language do most developers use?

What's a complier, debugger, etc. and other programming tools?

Thanks in advance.
 
I suggest you start with Cocoa. It gives you the option to code in either Objective-C or Java. The good thing about Cocoa is that connecting your code with the GUI is a lot easier than in Carbon. There is a lot of documentation on Objective-C to be downloaded at Apple's developer site (http://developer.apple.com). There are also several good books on this topic, my favorite is "Learning Cocoa", available at O'Reilly.

/Jkel.
 
If you're really new I'd suggest to start with RealBasic. (http://www.realbasic.com).
There is also a book around (Don't know the name), and the web is plenty of resources for this Programming-language.
It's probably easier to create apps with RealBasic than with Cocoa, but if you really want to go into deeper programming (hardware, etc.) Cocoa (or Carbon) would be the better solution.
 
Originally posted by minim
Which is the better programming language to start out with? Which langauge offers more control and versatility?

Which language do most developers use?

What's a complier, debugger, etc. and other programming tools?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

I'd suggest you start out with some fun things, probably Apple Script. Apple Script takes only a few days to really learn and once you learn it you'll understand how programming works. Once you've learned all you want about Apple Script then you can move onto a real language like C.

Most developers these days use C++ or Objective-C which are more advanced versions of C.

A compiler is the program (usually) which takes your code and turns it into the actual application program which you can double-click and run, depending on the language you have choosen to learn. A debugger is just what it sounds like. It's a program (usually) which goes through all of your code as if the code was compiled and checks it for bugs (problems). Very useful.

If you want/need more help give me a hollar on AIM (iChat) at: TannerUC

Good luck to you my friend!
 
I'm also trying to get up to speed with programming, after ten years of "I really should learn C one of these days." I started playing with Cocoa/ObjectiveC, but found that in my case I needed a better grasp of the basics first and "dropped down" to old school C++ until I'm more fluent.

Not to say that everybody (or even anybody) should go that route, just that if you find yourself unable to really gain traction with ObjectiveC, don't despair. One of it's biggest advantages is that it handles most of the more mundane chores behind the scenes. That's great when you're to the point when memory management and all that is just a burden, but in my case it made it more difficult to grok what was actually happening.

The situation reminds of me of an ad for the Guitar Institute of Technology back in the 80's... "You gotta know the rules before you can break them." YMMV, don't try this at my home, kids.
 
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