macOS What language/learning resources would you recomend.

[seriypshick]

Background:
- Good knowlege of PHP/MySQL
- Very good knowlege of HTML/CSS

Stuff that I currently have little or no expirience with (also this is what I want to learn):
- Computer programming
- Interface design (not command line, GUI)
- Object Oriented programming
- UNIX(terminal, commands, etc.)

So, anyways, what books/learning resources would you recomend. Also for books, it would be great if you would give me sometning that goes from Beginer to Advanced.

 

[caveman_uk]

Computer programming - depends what you actually want to learn but for Mac OS X development using objectiveC and Cocoa, Aaron Hillegass' book is excellent and is probably the best introductory text I've used in a long time link

Interface design - I've never used a book on it but there must be some. We can all see crap UI design when it someone elses but rarely our own I've found the best thing to do is try your program on a relative newbie and see how they get on...

OO Programming - The classic is Design Patterns but it's not exactly a lightweight read... Quite often the Cocoa frameworks decide the design pattern for you and you'll make you life unnecessarily difficult for yourself if you try to work against it.

Unix - There's a couple of O'Reilly books. The first is more of an introductory text and the second is more for people that know Unix and are moving to the mac. There are also quite a few Linux books around that could help. Remember that Mac OS X isn't Linux and there are some significant differences between it and other Unices.

 

[mj_1903]

Interface design - I've never used a book on it but there must be some. We can all see crap UI design when it someone elses but rarely our own I've found the best thing to do is try your program on a relative newbie and see how they get on...

I think interface design is something that you learn from experience rather than from a book. I personally try to copy the ideas of companies like the OmniGroup, Panic and Apple (although they can be extremely inconsistent). I think that is reflected in our software to a pretty good degree.

 

[atari1356]

Since you know PHP, you probably already have a decent grasp of basic programming concepts. Do you know javascript at all?

You might think about making a Dashboard Widget (assuming you have Tiger)... something that lets you use the skills you already have, and learn some new things like javascript programming and interface design as well.

Here is Apple's guide on making widgets:
http://developer.apple.com/document...utorial/Introduction/chapter_1_section_1.html

 

[Zion Grail]

Java is a very nice Object-Oriented language that can also be used with Cocoa (which will help you greatly with Mac OS X GUI design, thanks to Apple's excellent built-in tools.) It's also my favorite language to code in. This book is a fantastic way to learn Java. I find the language, as a whole, to be very elegant and far less frustrating than C++.

 

[seriypshick]

Thanks for replying.

I was thinking of bying "Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (2nd Edition)". However it's not yet updated for Xcode 2.0. Does anyone know when 3rd edition will be available. Or maybe there is some other book on xcode 2.0(besides apple's documentation).
Also, is there a big diference between 1.5 and 2.0?

P.S. I'm gonna learn Java Script for now.

 

[caveman_uk]

There aren't any books on xcode 2.0 just yet as it's pretty new. There's some in the pipeline (search on Amazon) but none just yet. I'm not sure there's a whole lot new from a GUI point of view in xcode 2 over the first version. There's quite a bit of difference over Project Builder though. Lots of settings etc moved....

There is of course the enormously huge xcode manual that's available on the developer site or is installed with xcode.

 

[medievalist]

There aren't any books on xcode 2.0 just yet as it's pretty new.

There is The Mac Xcode 2 Book by Dennis Cohen and Michael Cohen. I'm married to Michael so I'm biased; you can read about the book here. It's about Xcode 2.0, not 2.1, though there's some information about 2.1 on the site I linked to above, with more to come. This is a book meant for people who already know how to code, in Objective C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, Python, Java--whatever. It's about the Xcode tools and environment, about the ways Xcode 2.0 works with Cocoa and Carbon, about the debugging tools, about using Subversion, and the other version control systems Xcode supports. If, like me, you use AppleScript, and shell scripts and want to make them look and behave like apps, this book is good for us too. It's meant to be funny without being overbearing. It is not about how to write code, or about Cocoa, or Carbon; it's just about Xcode. It came out two weeks ago, but not in time to deal with 2.1.

If you're interested in designing an interface, there's a heck of a lot of information right in IB, and it's worth looking at for anyone interested in OS X UI issues. There's also Apples HIG for Aqua, and even the older Classic HIG, both of which are fairly short and quite readable.

 

[medievalist]

Background:
- Good knowlege of PHP/MySQL
- Very good knowlege of HTML/CSS

You might take a look at the series of OS X Terminal articles over at O'Reilly; they're pretty good, good enough that knowing to use the Help files /man files will probably do a lot of what you need.

Someone suggested Widgets; that's a good idea, and Apple's tutorial is not bad at all.

 

[HiRez]

It is not about how to write code, or about Cocoa, or Carbon; it's just about Xcode. It came out two weeks ago, but not in time to deal with 2.1.

Looks like an interesting book. Question: will it be available in major bookstores such as Borders, or only online. And will there be an update/online supplement to cover 2.1+? Thanks.

 

[medievalist]

The Mac Xcode 2 Book: At a store near you

Looks like an interesting book. Question: will it be available in major bookstores such as Borders, or only online. And will there be an update/online supplement to cover 2.1+? Thanks.

It's one of the books in Wiley's Ihnatko series, so it should be available pretty much everywhere. That said, it's about ten bucks cheaper at Amazon--and you can use the Look Inside This Book feature to see if it's the right book for you. As to an update, I don't know for sure, but probably not for several months, if then. I know that Dennis and Michael hope to have more on Xcode 2.1 on the book's Web site. Right now, they're both writing other books, so I don't know when that will happen. But I will be bugging them about it <g>.

I know that Mark Szymczyk's book Xcode Tools Sensei is also out now as an
e-book. It's very much directed towards Xcode 2.1 users who are deeply familiar with Xcode and Cocoa, and are interested in moving from PowerPC code to code for the Intel/MacIntel chip set.

In the mean time, I'd like to enthusiastically recommend Wil Shipley's blog; right now, he's doing a sort of tutorial on optimizing Xcode code and comments on Call me Fishmeal.

 

[Jedda]

Depending on how you look at it, there are some simliarities between the syntax of PHP and Objective-C.

This could help you slightly.

Objective-C is an incredibly powerful language, and is in my opinion, not too difficult to learn. You could even learn it without specific knowledge of C by reading "Programming In Objective-C" by Steven Kochan.

A fantastic book, it will teach you the Objective-C language using interesting examples, and not assuming any prior knowledge of programming at all.

After this, I would suggest Hillegass's book, "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X". This is another great book, which will help you layer good knowledge of Cocoa and interface linking over the top of your Objective-C knowlegde.

 

[wiseguy27]

UI design

For general information about good UI design along with book recommendations (and other articles about software development and management), check Joel Spolsky's article at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000247.html. His blog is available at http://www.joelonsoftware.com.

 

[HiRez]

In the mean time, I'd like to enthusiastically recommend Wil Shipley's blog; right now, he's doing a sort of tutorial on optimizing Xcode code and comments on Call me Fishmeal.

Hmm...he has some good things in there, but the guy is really quite full of himself and I'm not sure I agree with all his style "rules". I do wish Apple would acknowledge their own changes and stop using things like "if (self = [super init])" in their own code. Objective-C for all intents and purposes is theirs now (yes yes, I know it's not really); they should be good stewards and lead by example.