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mike868y · Mar 6, 2008, 07:00 AM

Hey guys, I am really interested in learning how to program on my mac. however, i have no idea where to start. I installed the developer tools, but they are pretty confusing. What language should i start off writing? is there a guide somewhere that can help me to learn? thanks for the help

mduell · Mar 6, 2008, 12:16 PM

Python is a good language to start with, IMO. Buy a book and start coding.

Sherman Homan · Mar 6, 2008, 01:27 PM

Ditto mduell, Python is great.
But if you want to write OS X applications with GUIs, it is all about C this is a good place to start:
SpiderWorks: Learn C on the Macintosh (Mac OS X Edition) by Dave Mark

mike868y · Mar 6, 2008, 04:05 PM

thanks for the help, are there any free online resources? I'm not a huge fan of books...

@pplejaxkz · Mar 6, 2008, 11:01 PM

Ditto mduell, Python is great.
But if you want to write OS X applications with GUIs, it is all about C this is a good place to start:
SpiderWorks: Learn C on the Macintosh (Mac OS X Edition) by Dave Mark

Looks like a good book, thanks for the link.

thanks for the help, are there any free online resources? I'm not a huge fan of books...

Sometimes I'd rather look at online resources too. Some books are so boring, it's hard for me to get into them.
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Happy Coding

rogermugs · Mar 7, 2008, 03:32 AM

These were the most straight forward basic introductions that I could find online... hope they help. (they're objective-c but I think its worth looking into).

Cocoa Dev Central: Learn Cocoa

Cocoa Dev Central: Learn Cocoa II

greenG4 · Mar 8, 2008, 05:23 PM

Would these be equally useful in learning to write iPhone apps? It's still Objective C (I think) in XCode right? I wanting to learn from zero experience. Oh, and I'm an old dog...New tricks... Wish me luck.

Chuckit · Mar 9, 2008, 12:36 AM

The iPhone version of Cocoa isn't 100% identical to the Mac OS X version, but a lot of it is the same and even the parts that are different have a lot of overlap. A good grasp on Cocoa will make Cocoa Touch seem very familiar. So yeah, a good foundation in Cocoa will translate to the iPhone.

greenG4 · Mar 9, 2008, 12:40 PM

Thanks! Let the learning commence...I hope. I might just be too old to learn this stuff.

rogermugs · Mar 14, 2008, 12:38 PM

teaching the old dogs is our exciting new trick.

parallax · Mar 19, 2008, 11:51 AM

Mike,

If you go to the Python website (python.org) there is a lot of documentation, including some user-friendly tutorials. :-)

Gee4orce · Apr 8, 2008, 05:00 AM

Python has a good reputation, but personally I prefer Ruby. Both of these languages are installed on OS X by default.

Just type 'irb' in the terminal and you an bang in Ruby code interactively.

Either Python or Ruby would be excellent ways to get into programming - they are so good in fact that many universities teach them to teach the fundamentals of programming. Once you have a grip of the basic concepts you can then progress to lower level languages like C (on which Cocoa/Objective-C is based).

There is a very powerful and popular framework for Ruby called 'Rails' which makes it very easy to develop web applications, so that's a great option if you want to develop web sites. The other benefit of learning Ruby is there is something called the 'Ruby-Cocoa bridge' in OS X which means you can actually write full blown OS X programs in Ruby. However, I'd still recommend getting to grips with Objective-C eventually, because this is the best way to go it you want to code OS X programs.

markponcelet · May 5, 2008, 04:13 PM

First of all, thanks to the OP for posting this question, and thanks to everyone who has already contributed answers. I just wanted to ask a couple of related things. If I charge in and start learning C (or even Python), would a book be enough to get a fundamental understanding necessary to be a good coder, or would it just be like a lot of the scripting tutorials that are out there already: just a tour of objects, methods, attributes, and maybe a few examples?

Like the OP, I'm not a CS student or someone all that familiar with programming. I came into it through web design. I just worry that there are things that people learn in CS classes that make it easier for them to pick up these books and go ... things that maybe we wouldn't have.

Any thoughts?

CharlesS · 10:28 PM

Here's my thoughts. Standard disclaimers apply: these are my opinions only, I may be full of BS, etc.

Python and Ruby are very easy-to-understand languages (although the way Python makes whitespace meaningful bugs me). They're simple, clear, and easy to understand. And this is why I recommend that you start with C instead. If you start by learning C, and then pick up the basics of object-oriented programming by learning Objective-C (preferred if you're developing for the Mac), C++, or C#, you'll be able to pick up Python or Ruby in an hour, and get pretty good at it. On the other hand, if you go the other direction from Ruby or Python to C, you might have a hard time wrapping your head around some of the lower-level concepts in C like static typing, memory management, and pointers. Learn C first, then jump to the scripting languages when you want to do some web development, and it'll be a breeze.

In short - these scripting languages are great, but I wouldn't become dependent on them so that you have trouble using anything that's not a scripting language.

FWIW, I learned C from that Dave Mark book that someone recommended, although it was many years ago and it was the Classic Mac OS version of the book rather than the OS X version. But the book was very good, and if the new one is just the same thing using Xcode instead of CodeWarrior, then I'd recommend it.

Oh, and don't try to learn Objective-C before learning C first. Objective-C is a very small set of extensions to C that give it support for object orientation. If you learn C first, you can pick up Obj-C in a day. If you don't know C, though, you won't have a good idea of everything you can do in Obj-C.