OS X/iOS Programming • Hacker News Board

Re: OS X/iOS Programming

#21

Post by Zev » Sat, Jun 26, 2010, 6:16 PM UTC

Is there anything specific that you want to do? In some cases, there might be better books for you to be reading (like OpenGL books, if you want to make some types of games). And targeting Mac vs iOS is rather different in some ways (UIKit and AppKit have lots of little corners in which they differ).

Hillegass is basically bible for Cocoa (Mac) programming. But, its not the best way to learn Cocoa Touch (iOS) for iOS. For that, I'll second Skroob's recommendation of Craig Hockenberry's book. Also, Jeff LaMarche and David Mark's Beginning iPhone Development is rather good and I personally have a nice copy of Bill Dudney and Chris Adamson's iPhone SDK Development that I'll skim on occasion.

But, you don't need to read all three of them; they basically cover the same material in different (but equally good) ways. After you've worked your way through one of them, maybe pick up Erica Sadun's The iPhone Developer Cookbook or iPhone Cool Projects by Wolfgang Ante, Mike Ash and a bunch of other really smart people.

And at some point, move away from the path documented and write your own app!

Re: OS X/iOS Programming

#22

Post by bobjohn » Sat, Jun 26, 2010, 6:48 PM UTC

Start by doing. I'm 15 and learned iOS programming just by /doing/ it, reading other people's code and working until my code worked as well. My code wasn't too pretty to start with, but it really helped me understand the SDK...

Re: OS X/iOS Programming

#23

Post by Hoff » Sat, Jun 26, 2010, 7:52 PM UTC

thefunk wrote: post #16

Hoff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having looked at both in some detail, Daniel Steinberg's Cocoa Programming book http://pragprog.com/titles/dscpq/cocoa-programming might be preferable to Hillegass's book.

why?

Hillegass spent time and text comparing Cocoa constructs to other programming languages. On distractions.

Steinberg's approach had better technical progression, tighter focus and superior editing.

Re: OS X/iOS Programming

#24

Post by MWinther » Sat, Jun 26, 2010, 8:42 PM UTC

My first resource to get to grips with Cocoa programming was the Hillegass book pointed out elsewhere. But when starting the iPhone focus, the Stanford iPhone Programming Lectures on iTunes U really were a great help for me, even though they didn't cover the latest version of the OS (They were doing it on 2.x when I did it, I suspect the latest one was for 3.x) they really explained a lot about philosophy and methodology, not to mention giving assignments and generally acting like a class.

In fact, I am intent on revisit the latest version of the course, but all the dev videos kind of ambushed me, so I haven't gotten around to them yet. Speaking of which, I really get a lot out of, but I think a lot of the reason for that is taking the iTunes U course first.

Re: OS X/iOS Programming

#25

Post by MWinther » Sat, Jun 26, 2010, 8:43 PM UTC

erlanger wrote: post #12

Is this some new trend where nobody prefixes self posts with "Ask HN"?

It's somewhat redundant, since the domain part is missing from the title, but that being said, I really prefer the prefix as well.

Re: OS X/iOS Programming

#26

Post by minischneides » Sat, Jun 26, 2010, 9:21 PM UTC

bobjohn wrote: post #22

Start by doing. I'm 15 and learned iOS programming just by /doing/ it, reading other people's code and working until my code worked as well. My code wasn't too pretty to start with, but it really helped me understand the SDK...

I'm curious, do you have any applications in the store right now?

Re: OS X/iOS Programming

#27

Post by damoncali » Sun, Jun 27, 2010, 12:51 AM UTC

The pragmatic bookshelf books are all pretty good. Just buy one and get started. Once you get oriented, you'll find apple's documentation to be pretty good, especially if you're used to typical open source documentation.