Re: New to Programming, XCode 2.5 vs 3.0 and finding good examples

FROM : Paul Bruneau
DATE : Wed Nov 07 14:07:19 2007

If the problem is finding tutorials for IB 3.0, then why not use 
existing tutorials with IB 2.5? (I'm still using 2.5) There is plenty 
of time to learn IB 3. And run, don't walk to Amazon and get 
Hillegass' book.

I tried three or four times over several years to get an idea of what 
cocoa was from the currency calculator tutorial, but when I got 
Aaron's book it was like an illumination. His Big Nerd Ranch if you 
have some money is yet another level of shoving information into your 
head that should be considered.

Additionally, since you come from scripted languages, you want to get 
a very good handle on what a "pointer" is or else things like memory 
management will boggle you, and your mind will not have a good 
understanding of what you are actually dealing with regarding objects.

Finally, I recommend going through some of the free xcode-based 
tutorials out there like
http://www.cocoalab.com/?q=becomeanxcoder

I went from a mediocre Carbon programmer to a mediocre Cocoa 
programmer in about 6 months using these resources. But being a 
mediocre Cocoa programmer lets me make awesome things and is 
amazingly fun. My 1/2 complete Cocoa project is already the coolest 
thing I have ever done.

On Nov 7, 2007, at 12:58 AM, Daryl wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am new to non scripting programming and I want to dive into 
> objective C and cocoa.  I am reading Steven Kochan's book but I 
> find the examples to be useless when trying to create anything 
> useful.  I am looking for some good tutorials that can walk me 
> though learning interface builder and using NStask.  I have a 
> strong unix background and I want to create an app that uses 
> command line tools like dd and such to experiment with cocoa.  I 
> keep finding the Interface builder 3.0 to be very different than 
> the examples I find that were written before hand.  Things 
> likehttp://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.20/20.04/ShellGame/
> index.html where it says "click the Classes tab, select NSObject, 
> and press return to create a subclass." and "click the Actions tab, 
> then click Add to create an action named doCommand."  These 
> examples don't seem to work in Interface builder 3.0.  I need 
> advise, I am having problems finding current examples and most of 
> the ADC documentation is way over my head.  I learn from pulling 
> open source apps apart but most of the nib files and such are 
> already constructed and I have no idea how they got there.  If 
> anyone could point me in the right direction it would be amazing.   
> thank you.
>
> -Daryl