Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 71-73 of 73
 Not if you have the 1st Edition, Not for iPhone!!! January 10, 2009
Craig Broadbooks (Cardiff, CA USA)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
If you already have "Programming in Objective-C", you won't need this book. It is nearly an exact copy of the original. The main difference is in the addition of a section about the iPhone. The iPhone part excluding the summary and exercises is literally 31 pages! So this isn't much of a primer for the iPhone. Just become a registered iPhone developer and there is more than enough online docs to get you going.
Now, if you don't have the original, then this is an excellent book and I would consider it a must have reference for anyone learning Objective-C.
The book is really a 5-star book, with a 1-star deduction for the weak iPhone section.
 Outstanding Beginner's Guide to Objective-C January 3, 2009
E. Kim
57 out of 60 found this review helpful
This book is both comprehensive and easy to understand. The sequence of chapters chosen to be read chronologically is well thought out (e.g. having the reader use static data types before introducing the generic id type, or having the reader declare and implement accessor methods before introducing the property and synthesize directives). The end of chapter exercises are also short (i.e. quick to complete) but also thoughtfully designed.
The author chose to make this book serve not only as a reference, but as a tutorial. In other words, a bit like the "... for Dummies" series in its hand-holding (i.e. tutorial) style. However, this book is certainly not for "dummies" as the author does not assume the reader to be slow or requiring interjections of humor or casualness. Other books will have authors write things like "Now grab a slice of pizza before we hit this really hard subject!", but this author thankfully spares the reader of this. Kochan is concise and direct. There are very few wasted or unnecessary sentences.
Kochan does not assume prior Objective-C, Cocoa framework, or X-code knowledge. However, if you have experience with just about any procedural or object-oriented language, you will have a much easier time with learning any new language, including Objective-C. If you do not have experience with ANY other language, then you will still have a difficult time with learning all of the Objective-C language as some topics just by their very nature are difficult to grasp immediately without practical experience.
Although there is a chapter each on the Cocoa framework and iPhone development, this book is focused on the Objective-C language and Apple's Foundation framework. Other resources will have to be utilized to learn Cocoa or Cocoa Touch.
BOOK'S TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Introduction
2. Programming in Objective-C
3. Classes, Objects, and methods
4. Data Types and Expressions
5. Program Looping
6. Making Decisions
7. More on Classes
8. Inheritance
9. Polymorphism, Dynamic Typing, and Dynamic Binding
10. More on variables and Data Types
11. Categories and Protocols
12. The Preprocessor
13. Underlying C Language Features
14. Introduction to the Foundation Framework Foundation Documentation
15. Numbers, Strings, and Collections
16. Working with Files
17. Memory Management
18. Copying Objects
19. Archiving
20. Introduction to Cocoa Framework Layers
21. Writing iPhone Applications
22. Appendix A. Glossary
23. Appendix B. Objective-C 2.0 Language Summary
24. Appendix C. Address Book Source Code
25. Appendix D. Resources
You may also want to consider reading Apple's developers' guides:
-Learning Objective-C: A Primer
-Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C
-The Objective-C 2.0 Programming Language
Apple's guides are not easy for a novice, but having read them before reading Kochan's book definitely made using his book significantly easier and faster for me.
In summary, this book will make learning Objective-C about as easy as it can be since it starts with the assumption that the reader has no prior programming knowledge.
Sloppy typos but overall excellent January 3, 2009
Anthony Lawrence (Middleboro, MA USA)
24 out of 32 found this review helpful
This book begins with a typo in the first program listing presented. My eyes blinked when I saw it. It's not a big deal - they just left out the beginning "<" in an #import line. There were a few more problems I noticed as I skimmed along through the first part of the book. A clumsy explanation of the size of data types made me blink again.
But does it matter? Were these little glitches serious enough to confuse a new reader? It's impossible for me to see this with fresh eyes - heck, I read my first C book nearly three decades ago and who knows how many other books I've read on C++ and other object oriented variants since then. I can skim a lot of this part.
I have to wonder how much of its intended audience will skimming along too. I can't imagine too many people with no prior exposure to object oriented C are going to pick this up for their first venture into Mac OS X programming. More likely they'll come from a background even deeper and stronger than mine and will be rushing through the first 300 pages even faster than I did: classes, check - good analogies, not over drawn, basic types, check, inheritance, polymorphism, check, check.. let's get to the OS X stuff!
Don't skim too fast though: this really is OS X stuff and the easy familiarity of having been through similar languages before could cause you to miss a thing or two. Just resign yourself to a little boredom and plod along.
As noted, the real meat starts about 300 pages in and consumes the rest of the book. And as I've surely noted elsewhere, I hate this stuff.
Oh, I don't mind object oriented C. That's cool. It's the long class names that make my eyes glaze over. There's also the regrettable fact that I don't like windowing interfaces - oh, I like using them (well, for some things, anyway), but I sure don't like writing programs for graphic displays. I'm stuck in character mode in the terminal. Windowing is rather necessary for a work like this but I drag my heels and clutch at anything handy to keep myself from being drawn in. Yeah, yeah: I have to get over this stuff. I know. But then I see "matr = [NSMutableString stringWithString: str1 ] and I get a headache.
Of course that's why this book encourages you to use XCode. Start typing NSMu and Xcode starts giving you possible completions. See, Tony, it's not that bad.. give it a chance!
Yeah, OK. I will. Kochan continues this part with practical examples - he really does do a good job with this and dives into the tasks typical to most any program. As much as I resist, he's a good teacher and a good writer. The typos in the first part of the book make me a little wary, but Xcode will surely get me by those if there are any.
So - looks like a keeper. Who knows, I may even grow to like programming this way. There's a scary thought!
Showing reviews 71-73 of 73
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