Re: Guidance for Cocoa's steep learning curve

FROM : Michael Ash
DATE : Sat May 17 12:02:52 2008

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 5:53 PM, Torsten Curdt <<email_removed>> wrote:
>> Imagine picking up a dictionary for a foreign language you don't
>> speak

>
> That is a very good analogy. For my situation I would take it even a step
> further....
>
> <analogy>
> Let's say I am fluent in Italian and Spanish already. I've even had one year
> of French in school.
>
> I am bored to death going through tutorials that try to teach me "Hello, my
> name is Torsten. What's your name?". On the other hand: whenever I want to
> write an sophisticated article - I get stuck. While I can look up individual
> words, I missing the proper phrases. Phrases are hard to teach. (And btw:
> hard to search for) You need to have proper conversations to learn them.
> What is so particular frustrating is that I am fluent in all these other
> languages. This makes hitting the wall when writing in French even more
> frustrating.


I agree with this, and I think a lot of people end up getting stuck at
this intermediate stage. Apple has a great "dictionary" and they have
decent "My name is Bob" material. They have little quality material in
the middle. This is where the books fill in. Personally speaking I
spent a lot of time at this middle stage before finally graduating,
mostly through sheer force of will.

There's definitely room for improvement here. My only point is that
the NSString class documentation is the wrong place for it to happen.

Mike