[Jaey]

I went through the Objective-C tutorial at the Apple Developer site, but I'm not really interested in making a currency converter. I don't think I got enough out of the tutorial to be able to write my own application either, so can any of you recommend a different tutorial?

My hope is, actually, to make a simple text editor or something...

[Chuckit]

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/ct/37

[proton]

Originally posted by Jaey:
My hope is, actually, to make a simple text editor or something...

The source code for the TextEdit editor that comes with Mac OS X is available here:
file:///Developer/Examples/AppKit/TextEdit/

- proton

[Jaey]

Originally posted by Chuckit:
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/ct/37

Thanks that's probably just what I was looking for... I'll also look at the source for TextEdit, and see if I can get anything out of it.

[Jaey]

Huh, I went through this tutorial and made a little text editor... I was kind of surprised how easy it was. Infact, I didn't need to write any code....?

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by Jaey:
Huh, I went through this tutorial and made a little text editor... I was kind of surprised how easy it was. Infact, I didn't need to write any code....?

Yep. Cocoa provides more text editing functionality than you'll likely ever need, so a bare-bones text editor can be created with no code. (The second half of the text editor tutorial does require something like 4 lines of code, though.)

Recreating NSTextView from scratch, on the other hand, is a gi-normous pain in the butt.

[alephnull]

I don't know whether my experience is typical, but over the course of a year or more I worked through several different tutorials like the ones mentioned here but never felt as though I was grasping even the basic concepts. I could tinker around the edges of the tutorial (e.g., add some small new feature) but anything beyond that was out of my reach.

As time went on, I did find two books that helped get me over this hump. One is the Hillegass book (Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X) and the other is the Anguish book (Cocoa Programming). There are a number of concepts that I only started to understand with the Anguish book. I don't mean to disparage any of the other books, because I own and have learned from each, but I found these two particularly helpful.

Frankly, there is a big need for intermediate books on Cocoa and Objective-C. I am regularly wrestling with something that, in the end, is not that difficult, but there is little or no discussion of it in the books or on-line docs.

So, this is probably somewhat off-topic, but I just wanted to suggest that the tutorials, while fine ways to get a taste for the tools, may not take you nearly as far down the road of learning Cocoa as you might be hoping. In the end, I can definitely say that it is worth the effort, but there is a lot to learn.

Good luck!

[larkost]

alephnull: Have a look at the Mac OS X Developer list that is hosted by Omni. There is also a search engine for that and another list (I forget its url though). There are more answers there than you can shake a stick at.

[alephnull]

Larkost: thanks for the tip -- I will definitely check it out!

[Jaey]

Um, I do notice that I can't save my documents using the program from the tutorial...

[dcsmrgun]

I wholeheartedly recommend "Learning Cocoa with Objective-C" by James Duncan Davidson (O'Reilly, ADC recommended title).

I'm from a scripting background (shell, ASP, PHP), so a lot of the OO concepts were completely foreign to me. James does a great job of not throwing things completely over your head.


To be fair, I did re-read most chapters 2 or 3 times over the span of a week, but that was more for my own peace of mind than anything. After every example he provided, I tried to adapt it somehow, perhaps combine code from previous examples into a working little application. Some concepts WILL take some re-reading and external research to understand. Don't be afraid to experiment.

My biggest problem was setting my goals too high. Sure writing a currency converter may not be your idea of a fun time, but it has its purpose. Try not to think about what you're writing, but why you're writing it. You'll write your killer app sooner or later, but you'll NEVER do it unless you start small.

[sjt]

There's some good stuff at www.cocoadevcentral.com

[starman]

You can read "Programming in Objective-C" by Steve Kochan.

Of course, my name's in the book .

Mike

[itai195]

Originally posted by alephnull:
I don't know whether my experience is typical, but over the course of a year or more I worked through several different tutorials like the ones mentioned here but never felt as though I was grasping even the basic concepts. I could tinker around the edges of the tutorial (e.g., add some small new feature) but anything beyond that was out of my reach.

As time went on, I did find two books that helped get me over this hump. One is the Hillegass book (Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X) and the other is the Anguish book (Cocoa Programming). There are a number of concepts that I only started to understand with the Anguish book. I don't mean to disparage any of the other books, because I own and have learned from each, but I found these two particularly helpful.

Thank you! I've been blasted by some people on this board for insisting that reading one or both of these books is the best way to learn Cocoa. The tutorials will only get you so far, and they don't provide nearly as comprehensive a view.

As for intermediate questions, don't hesitate to ask them here. We're not all experts by any means.

[theolein]

For a fantastic tutorial to the ObjC language itself, I would suggest this link. It gives you an excellent intro to the language, as opposed to the Cocoa frameworks, which are much more than the basic language itself. I bought the O'Reilly Cocoa book back in 2001, but rapidly found that they expected you to have read your way through the mind numbing ObjC articles on Apple's website first. I also eventually bought the O'Reilly ObjC Pocket Reference, which also provides an excellent intro to the language itself.

Of course, a good tutorial on C won't do any harm either.

[Truepop]

This might help you out.

http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/HTMLEditorX/index.html

Get Aaron Hillegass' book. It's fantastic - it has examples for most features, and it has challenges at the end of each chapter. I recommend working through the whole book and doing all of the challenges.

http://www.bignerdranch.com/products/cocoa1.shtml

[djohnson]

Here is an excellent list.

http://cocoa.mamasam.com