[kooBi]

Just curious - How long would it take for someone with above average intelligence, and no previous programming experience (although computer-literate) to learn how to develop Cocoa apps?

would depend on what you want to do. You can learn how do do a program that will take simple text imputs and do a computation very quickly.Developing a full blown app especially one that does any sort of graphics would be considerably more difficult. If you just want to get started with Mac Programming try RealBasic. Easier than cocoa and also you can build apps for OS 9, OS X, and even Windows.

[dogzilla]

Originally posted by kooBi:
Just curious - How long would it take for someone with above average intelligence, and no previous programming experience (although computer-literate) to learn how to develop Cocoa apps?

Check out http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/.../18/cocoa.html and decide for yourself. Honestly, I don't think C/C++/Obj-C concepts are all that difficult. And Apple's dev tools certainly make things very easy for you. I think the biggest challenge is in finding a usable reference to all the things you can do.

As far as RealBASIC - it's interesting, but ultimately a dead end. And it has *so* many bugs.

[mmj_ngen]

Hmm. Your basically asking how long it would take someone to learn to program. Cocoa does a lot for you, but it still really is just another pardigm. Nothing special necessarily. Try a tutorial, and get a feel for it yourself. Your the only one that can really gauge how long it will take. People may tell its easy because they forget what it was like to learn the basics of programming. People may say its hard because they either don't understand it themselves, or they place too much importance on their own abilities. It totally depends on you and your time.

Honestly, I wouldn't start out with developing in Cocoa first, but I know it's hard to resist. (learn C, or Java).

Maybe try one of Apple's Cocoa tutorial. See how long it takes you to run (and really understand) one of those. Multiply that time by a magnitude of 10. Read and research for that amount of time. At that point you should have a decent understanding of programming. Wow, I just pulled that out of my ass. It seems about right though. I'd recommend the Java Cocoa tutorial because it seems like the most straight forward with the most limited references to cryptic concepts or terminology, but that's just my limited opinion.

[Angus_D]

It really does depend from person to person, how much effort you put into it, etc etc. I'd suggest that it takes longer than 10 * time taken to write CurrencyConverter.

If it's your first programming experience, it might take longer to get your head round some of the concepts. I'd suggest getting Learning Cocoa from O'Reilly, possibly a book on C. Within 6 months or so of messing around things should start to click and you should be able to write a semi-decent app. The more time and effort you devote to it, the less time it takes to get good at it.

You must notice first there is a difference between learning Cocoa which is an API and learning Objective-C which is a language.

If you have some knowledge on C and OOP or on C++/Java, learning Objective-C is a matter of one week.

Learning Cocoa is really different since it's a very rich API. You can learn how to do simple software like currency converter in a week. When it comes to writing a real application, consider 6-12 months to be a good estimation. And after these 6-12 months don't hope to master the whole API, but instead imagine that you will be able to write most of an application without losing your time searching the documentation.

[Orbit]

Cocoa. A minute to learn, a lifetime to master.

Seriously though, I'd suggest starting out with learning some C programming, and then C++ (which is cake once you have C down), and then Objective-C after that. Basically, after you learn one programming language, you can pick up another one very quickly because you understand that they're basically doing similar things behind the scenes, just implementing things in different ways. Give yourself a year or more to maintain a leisurely pace and just absorb programming knowledge through practice and reading books on it. It's not magic, but there's a lot of minutae to wrap your brain around, and it can be rather confusing at times. It also really really helps to have friends who already program so that they can guide you around any pitfalls or help you out when you're totally stumped about something.

One thing I can suggest which really helps is going a little farther and learning, at least on a rudimentary level, about assembly code, the way a computer stores and accesses memory, and the basics of what happens inside a processor. It may seem a bit archaic and unnecessary, but it's essential for knowing *why* things are the way they are, and a lot of the finer points of programming fall into place. I'm not saying you should go out and learn the specifics of machine level programming or anything like that, but a basic understanding will help you learn the nature of the beast.

So, that was more info than you really needed to know on the subject. If you're starting from scratch, I'd suggest "Mac Programming for Dummies".. don't laugh.. it's Classic Mac OS Programming but it leaves no detail unaddressed, so it's easy to follow if you're just starting out.

[gorgonzola]

I'm moving this thread to OS X Developer. Click through to find yourself.

thanks

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