This is my first article in a while now. The reason is that I finally got into learning how to program in Cocoa for Mac OS X. Only recently did I manage pass the initially steep learning curve. Now things are easier and I make noticeable progress almost daily. I keep adding to my long time pet project, a fractal generator.
Last summer, after quite some research on Amazon.com, I had selected two highly recommended books.
- Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (2nd Edition) by Aaron Hillegass
- Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan
The first being the standard book to learn the basics about Cocoa, Xcode, and Interface Builder, the second teaching all the ins and outs about Objective C. You need to know about the first to learn how to design and edit GUIs and to connect them to your code, and the underlying Cocoa fundamentals. At the end of the day, the core of your program has to be implemented in Objective C and that’s where the second book comes in.
Back in high school and undergrad I used to program a lot in Turbo Pascal. I haven’t programmed much since then and now that I switched to the Mac, I’ve been itching to get back into programming. I started with the first chapter in Cocoa Programming which walks you through a short and example. Enticed to learn more, Chapter 2 was very difficult for me, lacking the Objective C background, not knowing anything about alloc, release, and the like. After studying the first 13 chapters of Programming in Objective C I was ready to get back to Cocoa.
I will use the Cocoa category of this Blog to share my experiences, programs, and source codes. The programs will be released under the GNU General Public License , just like all of this Blog’s content.
I welcome any feedback and suggestions.