[kman42]

Has anyone seen/read this book yet? How does it look?

kman

[wallinbl]

I just bought it today. I could let you know if a few weeks, if you have the patience!

[Kestral]

Originally posted by wallinbl:
<STRONG>I just bought it today. I could let you know if a few weeks, if you have the patience!</STRONG>

Yes, please do check in and get back to us! Also, could you let us know whether you have any prior programming experience and if so, what kind?

[TheBum]

I wish Amazon.com would get their act together on this. I ordered the book a couple days ago. At that time, Amazon was saying 3-4 days. Yesterday, they changed their tune and are now saying "not published yet". In fact, I had ordered another item with it and Amazon has now split the order into two different shipments. Oh well...I'll get it when I get it.

[ 12-20-2001: Message edited by: TheBum ]

[Cobra Commander]

I've had this book since last Friday. So far it's been very easy to follow. Each chapter is basically a tutorial. It's very hands on, which I like. The author assumes you know another object oriented programming language. It would be very helpful if you knew C since Objective-C is based on it.

[Chaaaosss]

I *love* this book. I love it I love it I love it. It's beautifully written, extremely easy to understand, and he gets right to the meat of everything immediately. If you have any programming experience whatsoever (I'm a second year CS major), this book is a breeze. It's simple, straightforward, and it slowly builds your knowledge of the core classes that comprise the Cocoa foundation and AppKit frameworks. There isn't much waxing about the evolution of Objective-C, where id comes from, where SEL comes from, when to use it, when not to, etc. Everything is essentially on a need-to-know basis, as in -- when you need to know it, he tells you. The other books released (namely the free PDF that comes with the dev tools, ObjC.pdf and the Cocoa book from Apple/O'Reilly) simply become references for more in-depth discussion of the origins of Objective-C and comprehensive descriptions of variable typing. To get a quick, practical introduction to Cocoa without having to strain to understand basic concepts like outlets and actions (explained in one sentence in this book where all the others take a couple pages), I definitely recommend it. Furthermore, as a trained C++ programmer, this book made it much easier to make associations with typing (as far as equivalencies... init is a constructor, outlets are class pointers, actions are messages attached to events, etc. The author does leave some basic things out -- he expects you to have some sort of a foundation in programming (but who shouldn't expect that?) but again, as a second-year comp sci major, I feel that the fluff was kept to an absolute minimum and that I was able to get started coding immediately.

[forty two]

Originally posted by kman42:
<STRONG>Has anyone seen/read this book yet? How does it look?
</STRONG>

Excellent book. Good for beginners, and also serves as a solid reference for non-beginners.

This book is essential for any Cocoa programmer right now.

[Diggory Laycock]

I can't wait to get my dirty little hands on this book - I've read nothing but praise for it, from the dev forum here, slashdot and other places.

I pre-ordered it from amazon.co.uk back in Nov. and am still waiting (amazon says "not yet published"), I assumed that this was because I was in Blighty, but if people in the US are also waiting then demand must be much higher than expected and they must have to re-print to satisfy the baying hoard.

Good news for the shareware market in about three months time (I predict there's going to be a lot of cool small cocoa apps)

[Glennfield]

Got it for Christmas. Wonderfully clear explanations of what I'm doing in each tutorial and why and how. I've worked up through Chapter 5 and read a few chapters more, and I'm already beginning to feel that I can develop a basic Cocoa application. (Which is a lot more than I can say about my previous attempts to learn C!)

Get it.

[forty two]

Originally posted by Glennfield:
<STRONG>I'm already beginning to feel that I can develop a basic Cocoa application. (Which is a lot more than I can say about my previous attempts to learn C!)</STRONG>

Sorry to be off topic, but if you don't know C it's going to come back to haunt you some day in your Obj-C programming. I know it may seem pointless now, but it really will pay off in the long run to learn C at some point.

[G Barnett]

Picked it up Saturday at Barnes & Noble. Love it. Much better and clearer than the O'Reilly "Learning Cocoa" book. Now I think I can (eventually) write something truly useful! Like, say, a D&D/Generic RPG mapping program for the Mac.

Yes. I am indeed that big of a geek. But when the guys who make the most popular tool call Virtual PC their "Mac Solution" something's gotta be done!


G Barnett

[cmittendorf]

Originally posted by forty two:
<STRONG>I know it may seem pointless now, but it really will pay off in the long run to learn C at some point.</STRONG>

It is pointless indeed. There is no Cocoa without learning C first.

I can advice you to learn C first. Create some small command line tools. Try to get a feeling what programming is all about. Then you might have a look at Java to get some object oriented experience. And as the next step you can get to Obj-C. However, you teach yourself Cocoa and Obj-C side by side. It's not so difficult and the Book from Aaron Hillegass is really a big help. I can also recommend it! Not to say that I love and I love the way Aaron is presenting his knowledge. I think you can see that he has some years of experience as a trainer and developer.

cu
cm

[spaceLenny]

I concur, this book makes the O'Reiley book look stupid. But without basic C knowledge, its useless. I like the explanations on what release/retain actually does.

-Dave

[seabrian]

I'm with Spacelenny on this one. This is definitely not an O'reilly book. If only it could be as good as the general o'reilly references for Java, Perl, and Python.