RE: Guidance for Cocoa's steep learning curve

FROM : john darnell
DATE : Fri May 16 16:57:05 2008

To set the record straight, I am going through two Cocoa books as we
speak.  (FYI, the books are O'Reilly's "Cocoa with Objective-C" and
Hillegass' "Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX") I, too recognize the value
of outside tutorials.  I would point out that both books encourage the
programmer to read the references, but I'm not sure that you would get
the point, so let it pass.

And, what I hear from this august crowd is a consensus that the
references are difficult to understand, but necessarily so--that they
ought to be that way.  This is a debate that has been going on since I
bought my first CP/M computer back in the early eighties.  I doubt we
will resolve it here.  I certainly have no intention of changing my
mind.

But I also hear from you all a willingness to help me, a newbie with all
sorts of newbie questions, figure out Cocoa, despite our differences.
That, I find gratifying.

I recommend we discontinue this discussion, and move on to that part
where I ask good, pointed questions about how to make Cocoa work.
You're all good people who are trying to convince someone who is part
Irish and part German and thoroughly stubborn.

Thanks for the lively discussion.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: cocoa-dev-bounces+john.darnell=walsworth.<email_removed>
[mailto:cocoa-dev-bounces+john.darnell=walsworth.<email_removed>] On
Behalf Of Michael Ash
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 9:32 AM
To: Cocoa Developers
Subject: Re: Guidance for Cocoa's steep learning curve

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 10:19 PM, john darnell
<john.<email_removed>> wrote:
>
> Sigh.  Your attitude reminds me of a conversation I once had with a
> fellow programmer.  When I was encouraging her to add more

documentation
> to the code, she replied, jokingly, "If it was hard for me to write,
> then it should be hard for them to read."
>
> The sad thing is that you are not joking...


I don't think you quite understood what I'm getting at.

Apple's documentation does its job quite well. The "problem" with it,
such as it is, is that it is not a tutorial. If you're learning a
system from scratch, you don't want and can't really use straight-up
documentation, you want a tutorial.

Apple's tutorials pretty much stink. They're short and quick and cover
very little. This is an area where they lack quite a bit and, luckly,
third parties have leapt in to cover the hole. If you're having
trouble getting up to speed then it is this lack which is getting you.

But it is unreasonable to expect the NSString reference documentation
to cover basic concepts about the framework. That's not what reference
documentation is for.

Mike
_______________________________________________

Cocoa-dev mailing list (<email_removed>)

Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list.
Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com

Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/john.<email_removed>
h.com

This email sent to john.<email_removed>