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A True Beginner For iPhone Development?


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So I am in my early days of school and next semester I will be learning some VB, but I would like to get into iPhone App making. Now I have purchased 2 books on developing for iphone for beginners. 10 pages into both these books and it says "This book was made with you having some knowledge in programing". WTF I bought the book so you could teach me that! So what I ask is where can I get a TRUE beginners start on programing for iPhone? Most importantly I don't want to spend another dime. I just bought this MacBook and 2 books i'm tapped out! Please help me guys! Thanks...

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I'm in the same boat. I did some incredibly basic C++ programming back in middle school for about 3 months, but that's it. I'd love to put some time into developing an iPhone app, but I have no programming background whatsoever. Any resources would be very helpful :)

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I'm in the same boat. I did some incredibly basic C++ programming back in middle school for about 3 months, but that's it. I'd love to put some time into developing an iPhone app, but I have no programming background whatsoever. Any resources would be very helpful :)

Its driving me crazy!!! I just want to get a little start before I start my classes in 2 months.

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Diving into embedded platform development as a first project is like getting started in football by playing in the NFL.

You need to learn the rules of the game, basic technique, and then step up to more difficult environments. I really don't think Objective-C is a particuarly forgiving language even with the improvements in 2.0. IMO it's best to start with something more programmer-friendly and then work back into the more arcane languages.

Head to Pragmatic Programmers and grab one of their entry level Ruby or Python books (Ruby is a pretty good choice because it's support for Cocoa is quite good). I'd got with Learn to Program: 2 ed..

Once you've gotten comfortable with the basics it's time to move on to mastering the language.

RubyCocoa is still in beta: so far it's not bad and it'll let you get familar with the Mac-way of writing code with a relatively friendly language.

Once you've got your feet wet in Cocoa and written a few mac applications it's time to learn about Objective C. Most Objective C books get you into Cocoa pretty quickly so having experience from learning basic programming with Ruby should make this easier. I'd snag O'Reilly's Objective C book. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is pretty much required reading for any aspiring Mac OS X developer so you might as well grab it and go. It's excellent.

While you're learning Cocoa and Objective C I think you'd be well served by a deep understanding of how Mac OS X works. Not only will it help you build better Mac desktop applications, the information applies to the iPhone as well (significant portions do anyway). Mac OS X Internals: A system's approach by Amit Singh is the best reference of it's kind.

The version of Cocoa on an iPhone is a tweaked/specialized version of the one you'd be using to write desktop applications - that's why I recommend starting with Mac development first. NSString on the iPhone is identical to the desktop version, containers offer similar sorting/iteration methods, UI classes follow similar conventions, etc. By this time you should be able to evaluate programming texts for yourself and choose an iPhone SDK reference. I don't have a recommendation for any specific book: I've gotten by using Apple's references provided to ADC members and my pre-existing understanding of Cocoa.

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Diving into embedded platform development as a first project is like getting started in football by playing in the NFL.

You need to learn the rules of the game, basic technique, and then step up to more difficult environments. I really don't think Objective-C is a particuarly forgiving language even with the improvements in 2.0. IMO it's best to start with something more programmer-friendly and then work back into the more arcane languages.

Head to Pragmatic Programmers and grab one of their entry level Ruby or Python books (Ruby is a pretty good choice because it's support for Cocoa is quite good). I'd got with Learn to Program: 2 ed..

Once you've gotten comfortable with the basics it's time to move on to mastering the language.

RubyCocoa is still in beta: so far it's not bad and it'll let you get familar with the Mac-way of writing code with a relatively friendly language.

Once you've got your feet wet in Cocoa and written a few mac applications it's time to learn about Objective C. Most Objective C books get you into Cocoa pretty quickly so having experience from learning basic programming with Ruby should make this easier. I'd snag O'Reilly's Objective C book. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is pretty much required reading for any aspiring Mac OS X developer so you might as well grab it and go. It's excellent.

While you're learning Cocoa and Objective C I think you'd be well served by a deep understanding of how Mac OS X works. Not only will it help you build better Mac desktop applications, the information applies to the iPhone as well (significant portions do anyway). Mac OS X Internals: A system's approach by Amit Singh is the best reference of it's kind.

The version of Cocoa on an iPhone is a tweaked/specialized version of the one you'd be using to write desktop applications - that's why I recommend starting with Mac development first. NSString on the iPhone is identical to the desktop version, containers offer similar sorting/iteration methods, UI classes follow similar conventions, etc. By this time you should be able to evaluate programming texts for yourself and choose an iPhone SDK reference. I don't have a recommendation for any specific book: I've gotten by using Apple's references provided to ADC members and my pre-existing understanding of Cocoa.

tldr: don't do objective-c as a first language.

Both of you seem to still be in school and have a moderate intrest in programming. Why not take some classes in programming rather then do-it-yourself? It's alot easier and you'd get credit for it.

Edit: also, I posted this link in another thread. This link probably won't be helpful until you've had a bit more experience, but it might save you having to buy a book dedicated to objective c.

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What language are iPhone apps written in exactly or is it a combination? Also there is a new Cocoa Programming for OSX

The native language is Objective C with "Cocoa Touch" as the native framework

Thanks for the helpful advice! I guess I better go warm up the old credit card.

Check out the Safari service: you can snag O'Reilly books in digital formats on a subscription basis. It's much cheaper than buying. Prag-prog offers PDF versions of their books for about half the price of print too.

IMO the books make great learning tools but weak references once you know what you're doing. Unless you really like dead-tree books there's not much to be gained purchasing them as physical books. Worst case: steal your company's printer ;)

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