macOS Anyone Else Using "Learn C on the macintosh, Mac OS X ed." by Dave Mark?

[ArchiMark]

Greetings,

Like some others here, I'm trying to self-teach myself programming.

My main goal right now is just to learn for my own benefit and enjoyment. If and when I actually get to a point where I can really do some 'real programming' then I might pick some specific area to focus on and learn more detail/depth about.

I've fiddled just a little bit here and there in the past with this, reading some books on BASIC, C, and C++. Some of the books only got part way through...

So, now I'm trying to discipline myself to get through Dave Mark's, "Learn C on the macintosh, Mac OS X edition." that I downloaded from Spiderworks website and then printed it out.

Overall, I find Dave's writing to be quite clear and easy to understand the various concepts. Also, he makes good use of example code and I've been running it in Xcode to follow along.

I'm about 1/3 the way through now and understand everything presented so far....if I run into any snags I thought I'd ask for help here...

Assuming I get through the next 2/3rd's in one piece, I intend to move on to trying to learn Cocoa and Obj C on my own.....

Anyway, just wondered if anyone else has used his eBook too?

If so, did you find it a good way to learn C?

If you haven't used this book, do you think after finishing this book I should

1) move on to Cocoa and Obj C right or

2) should I read some other C books first and/or

3) do some more programming practice in C before moving on or ???


Thanks for any thoughts and input!

Mark

 

[bobber205]

Practice. Practice. Practice. I know that sounds cliche, but it's even more important in coding. Do some dinkying around in stupid projects. No matter what it is or how stupid it sounds, do it anyway.

Every line typed is a line of learning.

 

[mduser63]

You should learn ObjC/Cocoa from books too. Other than, my advice would be to think of a program you'd like to write, then start writing it. Working on something you actually want to do is a great way to stay motivated. Start simple though. I see so many people decide they want to write something that sounds really cool but is way, way too complicated for a beginner, then they just get frustrated and give up.

 

[ArchiMark]

Yes, I agree with you, bobber205!

Found it to be true in almost everything else I've learned in other subjects...

Someone else told me this sometime ago in a slightly different way, he said, "Just type/practice some code every day and you'll be surprised how much you learn over time"....

Thanks,

Mark

Practice. Practice. Practice. I know that sounds cliche, but it's even more important in coding. Do some dinkying around in stupid projects. No matter what it is or how stupid it sounds, do it anyway.

Every line typed is a line of learning.

 

[ArchiMark]

Sounds, good mduser63....

So, as it relates to my question though, do you think I should keep working in C only for a while and then move on to ObjC/Cocoa or just jump right in after finishing the "Learn C" book??

Thanks,

Mark

You should learn ObjC/Cocoa from books too. Other than, my advice would be to think of a program you'd like to write, then start writing it. Working on something you actually want to do is a great way to stay motivated. Start simple though. I see so many people decide they want to write something that sounds really cool but is way, way too complicated for a beginner, then they just get frustrated and give up.

 

[lxpk]

Learn C by DavE Mark is the first programming book I read

The edition I got came with a bare bones version of the Think C IDE by IBM. I did all my first code learning with that book. A good one, although I usually start people off with something like PHP nowadays so they can immediately apply their skills to doing something useful without learning a ton of APIs.

 

[ArchiMark]

lxpk, I assume that you're referring to the older edition of the book, from the mid 90's, written before OS X....

Thanks,

Mark

The edition I got came with a bare bones version of the Think C IDE by IBM. I did all my first code learning with that book. A good one, although I usually start people off with something like PHP nowadays so they can immediately apply their skills to doing something useful without learning a ton of APIs.

 

[mduser63]

Sounds, good mduser63....

So, as it relates to my question though, do you think I should keep working in C only for a while and then move on to ObjC/Cocoa or just jump right in after finishing the "Learn C" book??

Thanks,

Mark

You know that's hard to say. I'd lean toward just jumping right in to ObjC/Cocoa. I knew C for a long time before I learned ObjC, but honestly now that I can write ObjC I'd never really want to write straight procedural C again. Object oriented programming is really a lot nicer. Another advantage to jumping in with ObjC/Cocoa is that you'll be able to start making GUI apps that are pretty cool (relatively) quickly, whereas C is basically best suited to command-line apps. That's not to say that it's a waste to learn C. For one thing, since ObjC is a strict superset of C, you can mix in as much regular C stuff as you want, and an understanding of C syntax will make learning ObjC that much easier (since so much of it is shared).

 

[ArchiMark]

Thanks again for all your input, mduser63. Really appreciate it!

I did get the "Learning Coca with Objective C" last week in anticipation of getting through the C book...and have downloaded some other tutorials, etc on this....so ready to go...just hope I can keep moving forward bit by bit or is it byte by byte??



Thanks,

Mark

You know that's hard to say. I'd lean toward just jumping right in to ObjC/Cocoa. I knew C for a long time before I learned ObjC, but honestly now that I can write ObjC I'd never really want to write straight procedural C again. Object oriented programming is really a lot nicer. Another advantage to jumping in with ObjC/Cocoa is that you'll be able to start making GUI apps that are pretty cool (relatively) quickly, whereas C is basically best suited to command-line apps. That's not to say that it's a waste to learn C. For one thing, since ObjC is a strict superset of C, you can mix in as much regular C stuff as you want, and an understanding of C syntax will make learning ObjC that much easier (since so much of it is shared).

 

[jhande]

I'd agree with learning objc without going the C route first. However, I would get the fundamentals of objc, before going on go Cocoa and friends.

 

[ArchiMark]

Sounds like a reasonable approach, jhande....

Thanks,

Mark

I'd agree with learning objc without going the C route first. However, I would get the fundamentals of objc, before going on go Cocoa and friends.