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macOS So what programming / comp sci books did you get for Christmas?

Cromulent

Cromulent

macrumors 604
Original poster
Oct 2, 2006
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The Land of Hope and Glory
Personally I got:

Programming Languages and Operational Semantics

I also have £100 to spend on other learning resources but I'm as yet undecided what to spend it on. I'm thinking of waiting until to my Uni course stuff arrives to see if I need to buy any books for that.

What about you?
 
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I have read the Aaron Hilleglass Cocoa book and I consider it very good for beginners.

Now I'm looking for a book to deep into cocoa and OSX programming.

The same author has a book about this, but I think it's a little bit outdated ( published in 2006 ).

Could you recommend me some book?
 
robj said:
I have read the Aaron Hilleglass Cocoa book and I consider it very good for beginners.

Now I'm looking for a book to deep into cocoa and OSX programming.

The same author has a book about this, but I think it's a little bit outdated ( published in 2006 ).

Could you recommend me some book?
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Once you have read the Hilleglass book you should know enough to just use the Apple Developer documentation to learn what you need to know. It is of a very high standard in general I have found.
 
Cromulent said:
Once you have read the Hilleglass book you should know enough to just use the Apple Developer documentation to learn what you need to know. It is of a very high standard in general I have found.
Click to expand...

You're right, finishing the book opens you a new world, and ADC Doc is very good, but I would like to have a book for "offline moments", like subway times and so on.

I'm downloading the ADC doc in PDF and reading it in my iphone. But, for now I prefer a printed book :)

I have searched in amazon, but I didn't find out anything interesting.
 
robj said:
You're right, finishing the book opens you a new world, and ADC Doc is very good, but I would like to have a book for "offline moments", like subway times and so on.

I'm downloading the ADC doc in PDF and reading it in my iphone. But, for now I prefer a printed book :)

I have searched in amazon, but I didn't find out anything interesting.
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Other than printing off the PDFs I don't know of any books that I would consider worth it when compared to a more generalised book.

wrldwzrd89 said:
Not right now - I don't have the book with me. Sorry. :(
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Oki dokie :).
 
I'm guessing it's Programming in Objective-C 2.0 LiveLessons Bundle although it's $44 on Amazon :confused:

This value-priced bundle contains both the bestselling book Mac/iPhone development book, Programming in Objective-C 2.0, and a complete video training course on the fundamentals of Objective-C, Programming in Objective-C 2.0 Live Lessons, Part I, with more than 8 hours of video training on DVD from author and trainer Stephen Kochan.
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I got a slew of them. Made an amazon.com wish list and sent it out to everyone.

Beginning Ruby (apress)
Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Bookshelf)
jQuery Cookbook (OReilly)
Beginning iPhone 3 Development (apress)
iPhone User interface Design Projects (apress)
Cocoa Touch for iPhone OS3 (Wiley)
Cocoa for Mac OS X (Hillegass)
iPhone Developer's cookbook (sadun)

I'm a CS/CE major. Really getting into Ruby on Rails web development while I'm in school, and that's my first priority. However, the iPhone/mac programming books are more for 'fun' projects for now.
 
Cromulent said:
Once you have read the Hilleglass book you should know enough to just use the Apple Developer documentation to learn what you need to know. It is of a very high standard in general I have found.
Click to expand...

I really want to pick this book up soon. Do you feel beginners can get a lot out of this book, or do you need prior language knowledge before attempting this book?
 
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Thank you for the heads up.
Edit: I believe I am placing the order shortly for the Hilleglass book. Book stores sell if for $49.99, and I don't mind buying it online. Is $32 USD a fairly good price for the book?
 
It took me a while to figure out exactly what I didn't like about the Hillegass text. I read Kochan's excellent texts (Programming in C and Programming in Objective-C) and didn't really learn from Hillegass's style the way I learned from Kochan's.

My issue is that Hillegass builds applications with Interface Builder from the very start. IB can be a wonderful tool, but for someone just stepping into OOP (like I was) using IB comes off as a little "hand-wavey". I think IB is a much better tool for people who have experience building UI by code.
 
This is a bit of a strange response to your question, but here it goes. My response probably only makes sense for huge fans of Don Knuth.

I wasn't asking for any new computer science books this year (I already have dozens and dozens, probably 200+ books on CS, since I'm a professor that does research in analysis of algorithms)..... BUT I also buy the books on Knuth's own reading list:

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/retd.html

I already owned the first 14 of these books, but the last 3 of them were recently added, and I received them for Christmas this year. The Blasphemy and Blacklist books were novels, and the Travels of Ibn Battutah is a journal by a Muslim scholar (if anyone else is buying these books, be careful... do not confuse the Travels book with another one, called Travels with a Tangerine... you'll see that they are both by the same author).

I apologize for the unorthodox response, but I thought that people who know Knuth's work might be pleased to read this post.
 
foshizzle said:
I got a slew of them. Made an amazon.com wish list and sent it out to everyone.

Beginning Ruby (apress)
Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Bookshelf)
jQuery Cookbook (OReilly)
Beginning iPhone 3 Development (apress)
iPhone User interface Design Projects (apress)
Cocoa Touch for iPhone OS3 (Wiley)
Cocoa for Mac OS X (Hillegass)
iPhone Developer's cookbook (sadun)

I'm a CS/CE major. Really getting into Ruby on Rails web development while I'm in school, and that's my first priority. However, the iPhone/mac programming books are more for 'fun' projects for now.
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That's a pretty big stack of books :). I hope you have strong bookshelves.

mward333 said:
This is a bit of a strange response to your question, but here it goes. My response probably only makes sense for huge fans of Don Knuth.

I wasn't asking for any new computer science books this year (I already have dozens and dozens, probably 200+ books on CS, since I'm a professor that does research in analysis of algorithms)..... BUT I also buy the books on Knuth's own reading list:

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/retd.html

I already owned the first 14 of these books, but the last 3 of them were recently added, and I received them for Christmas this year. The Blasphemy and Blacklist books were novels, and the Travels of Ibn Battutah is a journal by a Muslim scholar (if anyone else is buying these books, be careful... do not confuse the Travels book with another one, called Travels with a Tangerine... you'll see that they are both by the same author).

I apologize for the unorthodox response, but I thought that people who know Knuth's work might be pleased to read this post.
Click to expand...

I'd love to have the time to read other non-technical books but when I finally do get the chance I prefer reading some sci-fi by Iain M Banks or some fantasy novels.
 
I got myself the Dudney iPhone SDK Development book. I've only dabbled with iPhone development but I'm going to try to really dig into it this year...if I can find time around my day job... :-/
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
mward333 said:
This is a bit of a strange response to your question, but here it goes. My response probably only makes sense for huge fans of Don Knuth.

I wasn't asking for any new computer science books this year (I already have dozens and dozens, probably 200+ books on CS, since I'm a professor that does research in analysis of algorithms)..... BUT I also buy the books on Knuth's own reading list:

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/retd.html

I already owned the first 14 of these books, but the last 3 of them were recently added, and I received them for Christmas this year. The Blasphemy and Blacklist books were novels, and the Travels of Ibn Battutah is a journal by a Muslim scholar (if anyone else is buying these books, be careful... do not confuse the Travels book with another one, called Travels with a Tangerine... you'll see that they are both by the same author).

I apologize for the unorthodox response, but I thought that people who know Knuth's work might be pleased to read this post.
Click to expand...

I have had Life: A User's Manual for years and still haven't got around to reading it yet. I also have another book by Georges Perec called A Void, which is a full length novel written entirely without the letter e. Amazingly, he wrote it in French (also without the letter e) and then it was translated to English.
 
Yeah, you can get the combo of my book and DVD (Part I) from Amazon for around $44, which I think is a pretty good deal considering the book alone sells for $30. (My publisher even suggested that those who already have the book can buy this bundle and turn around and sell the book on eBay!)

I finished a Part II DVD (covers Foundation and gives an intro to iPhone programming) a couple of months ago, but I don't think the publisher released that yet. In fact, I'm not even sure how they're going to sell that. :mad:

The DVD pretty much directly follows the book. It's basically me talking to myself in front of a computer (that took some getting used to), while using a combination of slides and program examples. Some people learn better through lecture and demonstration than from just reading a book. So there are just some more choices here for the Objective-C newbie.

Cheers,

Steve Kochan
 
skochan said:
Yeah, you can get the combo of my book and DVD (Part I) from Amazon for around $44, which I think is a pretty good deal considering the book alone sells for $30. (My publisher even suggested that those who already have the book can buy this bundle and turn around and sell the book on eBay!)

I finished a Part II DVD (covers Foundation and gives an intro to iPhone programming) a couple of months ago, but I don't think the publisher released that yet. In fact, I'm not even sure how they're going to sell that. :mad:

The DVD pretty much directly follows the book. It's basically me talking to myself in front of a computer (that took some getting used to), while using a combination of slides and program examples.

Cheers,

Steve Kochan
Click to expand...
Sigh. I didn't even think to check Amazon... :eek: Thanks for your post, though. I appreciate it.
 
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