iOS Help please [start developing for iPhone/OS X]

[bob616]

hello i want to start developing for the iPhone and the Mac OS X i have no experience with developing is there any good books that i should get.

thanks in advance

 

[firewood]

There are lots of different ways to start. I recommend going to the library and getting a beginning book or two on Javascript. Once you get past the basic ideas of how to design and debug short programs, try developing a couple simple Javascript enabled web apps for your iPhone. Then move on to basic C programming, then get a very basic introduction to an OOP language such as Smalltalk or Java, then move on to Objective C with Cocoa and UIKit for iPhone app development.

Diving straight into iPhone development is a little like someone who doesn't even know how to boil water trying to home cook a great five course dinner... with a hot date about to arrive in 2 hours. Most likely a recipe for a kitchen disaster.

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[bob616]

There are lots of different ways to start. I recommend going to the library and getting a beginning book or two on Javascript. Once you get past the basic ideas of how to design and debug short programs, try developing a couple simple Javascript enabled web apps for your iPhone. Then move on to basic C programming, then get a very basic introduction to an OOP language such as Smalltalk or Java, then move on to Objective C with Cocoa and UIKit for iPhone app development.

Diving straight into iPhone development is a little like someone who doesn't even know how to boil water trying to home cook a great five course dinner... with a hot date about to arrive in 2 hours. Most likely a recipe for a kitchen disaster.

.

thanks for the advice. how long do you think it will take before i am ready to develop for the iphone. (i am usually a very quick learner)

 

[OS X Dude]

C is easy enough to grasp, won't take long. If it were me, I'd cut out the JavaScript part and just go with learning C first. Objective C is just a modification of the C language anyway, so it's more relevant anyway.

 

[Cromulent]

C is easy enough to grasp, won't take long. If it were me, I'd cut out the JavaScript part and just go with learning C first. Objective C is just a modification of the C language anyway, so it's more relevant anyway.

I agree. Do anything possible to avoid Javascript or any such language (run if someone says PHP).

 

[firewood]

There are lots of ways to make mistakes while programming. Most programmers have forgotten all the simple ones, and thus recommend an extremely difficult path for average beginners.

Javascript (and a few other scripting languages) allows a beginner to start programming with less opportunities for compiler errors, pointer errors, mixing up data types, and such. But there are still plenty of opportunities for programming errors and bugs. Some people never get past that level of complexity. Once a beginners has gained the skills to get past those, they can then more easily add on the far greater potential for bugs (and sophisticated programs) that C and Obj-C provides.

I recommend Java for OOP, because there are dozens of beginning Java books, but few to none on Obj-C targeted at absolute non-programmers (the kind who has no notion of a variable or control statement).

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[gusapple]

Thank you firewood. I want to try to get a basic knowledge of programming, because I'm pretty sure that it'll help me somehow in the future. Wether getting a job or just being able to understand how something works.