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x-daemon · Nov 10, 2003, 07:26 PM

Hello guys,

I'm a developer on Windows platform. Mainly web based applications; ASP, ASP.NET, VB, SQL etc.

I love Macs for years, however, they are way expensive in my country Turkey (and in Europe, also).

And currently i'm a student at technical university and studying mathematical engineering.

Anyway, i want to do something on Macintosh.

I need your advices: What and how can i develop on Macintosh?

I'm thinking of starting a student developer group at my school. So, there will be seminars, tutorials, advices... What can i teach them.. What can atract their minds to develop on Macintosh?

Thanks all for your help..
Ozkan

Catfish_Man · Nov 11, 2003, 12:07 PM

Well, I can say from experience that Cocoa programming is a lot of fun

depolitic · Nov 11, 2003, 07:59 PM

I would find out what the majority of developers or students are into on your campus, then make the focus of your "seminars, tutorials, advices..." focus on how doing what they on other platforms is so much better on Mac OS X, with its frameworks, UNIX, and developer tools.

So if you have C developers introduce them to Cocoa/Carbon. If you have Java developers show them Apples excellent out of the box Java support.

People will show interest in anything if you can show them that they will have a personal gain and that person gain far out ways the cost and pain that comes with change.

Meneldil · Nov 11, 2003, 08:59 PM

It seems the Apple Developer Hardware Discount is not currently available in Turkey, but I'm not sure about the rest of the Apple Developer Connection benefits. In case you haven't heard of it, look at http://connect.apple.com. Even if you don't get the hardware discount (which you ought to ask about, I have no idea how they decide where to offer it) being an ADC member gets you a lot of other things, and they may have some resources or at least be able to point you at some people who have started student developer groups.

TampaDeveloper · Nov 12, 2003, 07:58 PM

Originally posted by Meneldil:
It seems the Apple Developer Hardware Discount is not currently available in Turkey, but I'm not sure about the rest of the Apple Developer Connection benefits. In case you haven't heard of it, look at http://connect.apple.com. Even if you don't get the hardware discount (which you ought to ask about, I have no idea how they decide where to offer it) being an ADC member gets you a lot of other things, and they may have some resources or at least be able to point you at some people who have started student developer groups.

I'm kind of in the same boat as x-daemon. Though I'm dying to get an Apple to write applications for, IT folks such as myself are not exactly busting with extra cash at the moment to spend on a toy to develop applications for free. And the Apple Developer Hardware Discount is hardly a way to save money. Its only available if you buy the Select or Premier membership, $500 and $3500 respectively. This more than negates any savings of whatever hardware discounts you get (the discounts are also limited to one machine, so don't think you can buy 30 machines and sell them to your friends to make up the cost difference).

Meneldil · Nov 13, 2003, 06:44 AM

If you're a student, they're is an once in a lifetime discount of about 20% if you become a student developer. This is $99 a year, and includes other things like operating system upgrades (get Panther for no extra cost, for instance). He mentioned he was a student, which is why I pointed it out. I don't about your case - the cost of the higher levels offsets the discount unless you buy a really nice computer, though you might also factor in OS upgrades and whatever other goodies they give- free copy of OS X Server, discounted or free WebObjects, etc. Granted that only matters if you want/need those things anyway. The Premiere membership does let you buy 10 machines a year, but given that you sign an agreement not to sell the machines for one year, it might be a bad idea to sell to friends to make up the cost difference.

By the way, x-daemon, in the US Apple has a volunteer program for 'Apple Campus Reps' that makes an interested student a sort of official Apple Rep on campus. I don't know if they support it in other countries, but if you want I can give your email or whatever to the current Apple Campus Rep at my old school- I know him, and I think he'd be willing to help you get in touch with people if he knows of any resources and such.

x-daemon · Nov 15, 2003, 02:41 AM

Thank you all for great advices and thank you Meneldil,

I'd be gladly appreciated if you could give it.

nufferkay · Dec 7, 2003, 02:48 AM

You could also get an older Mac, like a G3 iMac, secondhand. Maybe it won't be a speed-demon at compiling, but it should run OS X and the developer tools.

The great thing about developing Cocoa applications is how easy it is. The "hello world"-on-a-button-click app is about 2 lines of code.

Basically, with Objective-C and Cocoa, you get all the ease of VB but incredible under-the-hood power, as it is fully compatible with C and C++.

There are some good tutorials online - let me know if you'd like URLs for a few.

Jens Peter · Dec 7, 2003, 10:05 AM

Originally posted by nufferkay:
You could also get an older Mac, like a G3 iMac, secondhand. Maybe it won't be a speed-demon at compiling, but it should run OS X and the developer tools.

...

There are some good tutorials online - let me know if you'd like URLs for a few.

I have a iMac G3, 600 mhz, and it runs X and Project builder nice.

About those links, I would like them.

nufferkay · Dec 7, 2003, 10:47 AM

Originally posted by Jens Peter:
I have a iMac G3, 600 mhz, and it runs X and Project builder nice.

About those links, I would like them.

Sure. FWIW, these tutorials are for Jaguar and Project Builder, not Panther and XCode.

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/ct/37 - O'Reilly's OS X development center, includes some nice tutorials

http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/HTMLEditorX/index.html - a basic tutorial on creating document-based applications. (This one can be a bit confusing if you don't know the terminology, so you may want to save it until you've looked at a couple others).

http://www.stepwise.com/StartingPoint/Cocoa.html - a list of Cocoa resources

http://www.osxfaq.com/Tutorials/index.ws - another tutorial (this one focuses on the nitty-gritty, like memory management, rather than how to create a GUI).

http://cocoadevcentral.com/articles/...are_basics.php - lots of miscellaneous tutorials.

hth,
-N