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melman101 · Oct 30, 2001, 12:36 PM

Hey all, i originally was a PC user, and now i have decided that PC's are a thing of the past. I really love the way Mac OS X has all those nifty buttons, icons, sliders, and what not. I want to program for it, and I have a bit of basic knowledge of C++, Java, and Visual Basic in the PC realm. How can I start creating programs that use visual interfaces with Mac OS X? Maybe a good book or a good tutorial website will be helpful? i am more interested in website learning because books cost $$$.

Thanks for your time

Melman101

Millennium · Oct 30, 2001, 01:08 PM

The documentation at http://developer.apple.com would be a good place to start. You need an ADC Online membership to access this stuff, but that's free anyway.

In terms of where to start, you actually have quite a few options. Your C++ skills would translate well to Carbon, and it shouldn't be hard to pick up Objective-C if you want to go Cocoa. Of course, you could go Cocoa/Java and skip Obj-C entirely, if you want. Your VB skills would translate decently to REALBasic, but that costs money, if that's a deterrent for you.

If you want books, O'Reilly publishes books on Carbon, Cocoa, and REALBasic. Pretty good stuff, though the Carbon and Cocoa books are largely reprints of the tutorial material on the Website.

Rick1138 · Oct 30, 2001, 01:45 PM

There is a book by Aaron Hillegass being published in early December which is supposed to be the state of the art in programming books for OSX,at least that is what I have heard from people who have read the proofs.A good website to go for information on OSX programming is www.stepwise.com .The interfaces are created in Project Builder which is on the Developer CD,it's really very easy,drag and drop mostly.

Rickster · Oct 30, 2001, 05:50 PM

If you want to get into Cocoa, I strongly suggest reading Apple's Object-Oriented Programming and the Objective-C Language. Even if you're using Java, the book is a very good introduction to the types of OOP philosophies and design patterns used extensively in the Cocoa frameworks.

melman101 · Oct 30, 2001, 09:47 PM

I printed out both Currency Converter Tutorial, and the Object Oriented Programming and the Object-C Language files. Is there anything else do you think I would need to get started? I am going to read the converter tutorial first, and then the OOP and OC language document next. Any suggest any different course of action? thanks for your time

Mel

melman101 · Oct 30, 2001, 09:57 PM

I printed out both Currency Converter Tutorial, and the Object Oriented Programming and the Object-C Language files. Is there anything else do you think I would need to get started? I am going to read the converter tutorial first, and then the OOP and OC language document next. Any suggest any different course of action? thanks for your time

Mel

TheBum · Oct 31, 2001, 12:25 AM

Originally posted by melman101:
<STRONG> Is there anything else do you think I would need to get started? I am going to read the converter tutorial first, and then the OOP and OC language document next. Any suggest any different course of action? </STRONG>

I would suggest going over to O'Reilly's Mac DevCenter (http://www.oreillynet.com/mac) and checking out Mike Beam's excellent "Programming in Cocoa" series. I learned more from that than I did reading Apple's documentation.