iOS Getting started with XCode/Obj-C but have some outdated books.

[MikeonTV]

I'm a pretty well qualified web programmer and I'm moving on to general XCode/Objective-C and iOS development. I have some older manuals which I plan on using

iOS 5 Development from APress
Programming in Objective-C 4th Edition from Addison-Wesley.

Are these 2-3 year old books too out-of-date for me? Should I be focusing more on the most updated development manuals?

Thanks.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

iOS 5 should be fine... Storyboards were around then, right?

 

[PBG4 Dude]

iOS5 has storyboards and ARC, but uses strong pointers for IBOutlets compared to weak pointers in iOS6/7. Also, there is less @synthesize stuff required in iOS7 vs. iOS5. In iOS5 you needed to:

@synthesize myProperty = _myProperty;

in order to disambiguate the property from the iVar. This is done automagically now.

 

[1458279]

Dump the books, get new ones.

Why? because too many basic things change. One example is memory management, it's worthless to learn ref counting.

Apple wants people to exploit the latest everything (API, Sensors, etc). It sucks to have books become outdated so soon, but that's the nature of the beast.

There is value in learning from older books if you are just learning programming in general or things like data types, but it's really not worth the time.

 

[MikeonTV]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I have decided to simple learn using resources online. 24 hours later and I'm glad I did.

Appreciate the constructive feedback.

 

[iMacFarlane]

FWIW, check out the "iOS by Tutorials" series by Ray Wenderlich.

 

[DannyBres]

I learnt with the Big Nerd Ranch books, they are excellent. And up to date for iOS6 IIRC.

Most of my learning today is from Ray Wenderlich's site. He sells some ace ebooks.

 

[firewood]

...too many basic things change. One example is memory management, it's worthless to learn ref counting.

It's certainly not worthless if a developer wants to know what ARC is doing "under the hood" and/or has to debug potential gnarly memory and performance issues.

However, I do recommend starting with newer books, as many old APIs and build procedures were extremely confusing compared to or when mixed with the newer ways.

 

[joshuatbrown]

I'd strongly recommend you start learning with newer resources - preferably ones that are updated for iOS 7. The Big Nerd Ranch books are up to date for iOS 7 and would be a good place to start:

http://www.amazon.com/Objective-C-Programming-Ranch-Edition-Guides/dp/032194206X/
http://www.amazon.com/iOS-Programming-Ranch-Edition-Guides/dp/0321942051/

Or if you like video lectures, you could try the Stanford iOS course, which is also updated for iOS 7:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-7-apps-for/id733644550