[Macanoid]

I have an idea for a small utility-like program which doesn't exist yet. I have no programming experience at all and was wonder how to best go about learning programming for OSX and if this will be difficult at all?

Thanks for the help!

[szymczyk]

There are many ways to learn Mac OS X development, but these are the three that would be best for someone with no programming experience.

1. Cocoa programming with AppleScript.
2. Cocoa programming with Objective C
3. RealBasic

The best thing about the two Cocoa options is the tools you need to write Cocoa applications: Xcode and Interface Builder, ship with Mac OS X. AppleScript is easier to learn than Objective C, but is less powerful. If you plan on developing larger Mac OS X applications after writing your small utility, I would recommend learning Cocoa programming with Objective C.

To learn Cocoa programming with Objective C, you'll need two books: one to teach you C (Objective C is based on C) and one to teach you Cocoa. Dave Mark has an electronic book that teaches C programming with Xcode. You can buy it at Spiderworks. There are a lot of Cocoa books available, but most people would recommend Aaron Hillegass' book.

RealBasic is designed to build applications quickly, espcecially applications that use a database. It's not free, but you can download a trial version to see if RealBasic is right for you. One advantage of RealBasic is that if you buy the professional version, you can build applications for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. I'm not sure whether that's important to you.

How difficult learning programming for OS X will be depends on you. Since you haven't programmed before, you won't know how difficult it will be until you start. Be prepared to spend several months learning.

[Macanoid]

Thank you very very much for all the info - I will look into the information provided!!