Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 16-20 of 73
 The best book for true iphone beginners August 22, 2009
David O. Giacomini (Fort Collins, CO USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
First of all, I'll share a bit about myself to help put this review in context. I am in the process of starting a small business selling high end travel gear for kids called Jr. Luggage. I also own a small web development and design company. My background is primarily in marketing and web development. However, as my agency grew, I began to rely more on employees as they were both quicker and more efficient. However, I'm the type of personality that likes to continually learn new things. We just hired an iphone developer to build an alarm clock app and have several more travel related games and apps in store. I felt this was as good of time as any to take on the challenge of learning Objective C 2.0 which is the core language for building iphone apps. I am fairly tech savvy, pick up programming fairly well, familiar with HTML, PHP, some javascript, filemaker, some flash. I don't consider myself an expert in these areas but I can get by. I picked up a C++ book once about 10 years ago and never read it so that is the extent of my knowledge with C/C++.
So as with most projects I commit to, I studied every review and bought several books to start my learning process. The books I bought are:
- Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition)
- iPhone Cool Projects
- Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
- (this book) Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition) (Developer's Library)
Again, I am a true beginner. Those already familiar with C, C++ or Objective-C, would probably benefit from different types of books. I was really looking for something for a true newbie but would provide a good foundation to build on and have enough substance so that I felt I was making progress.
I started with 'Beginning iPhone3 Development' which is well written and looks very promising. However, it was clear very early on that the reader should already be familiar with Objective-C and Xcode (I didn't even know what Xcode was). So I backtracked and starting reading Programing in Objective-C.
I'm only through a few chapters so far but I am very pleased. The author is very good about spelling things out in clear and easy to understand detail. I quickly learned about the Apple developers program, xcode, and wrote my version of "Hello World."
I also like the philosophical approach the author takes. Here is a quote from the book about the overall philosophy:
"First, learning the entire C language before learning Objective-C is wrong. C is a procedural language containing many features that are not necessary for programming in Objective-C, especially at the novice level. In fact, resorting to some of these features goes against the grain of adhering to a good object-oriented programming methodology." "So I decided neither to teach C first nor to assume prior knowledge of the language. Instead, I decided to take the unconventional approach of teaching Objective-C and the underlying C language as a single integrated language, from an object-oriented programming perspective."
This is exactly what I was looking for. Something basic enough for a true beginner but not so thorough that I would have to learn the foundation of C/C++. I am totally confident that once I work through this book and the others on my list, I will be able to develop my own iphone apps. At a minimum, I will have a better technical understanding of what can and can't be done when working with an iphone programmer.
 Good introductory Objective C book but supplement it with another book to learn more about developing on an iphone August 20, 2009
Pat Choi (L.A., CA United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an my first exposure to Objective C (I have background in C/C++/Java/C#). The language is relatively easy to learn and the book does a good job teaching it. I would imagine it would be rather difficult for newbie to learn Objective C (using this book or any book) if you have never program in an modern Object-Oriented (OO) language before (just because there is so much to learn/cover. But that's just my opinion).
Pro - (i) Easy to read. (ii) Lot of examples and they are simple, clear and straight to the point. (iii) Probably the only on the market to 'really' teach you Objective C.
Con - (i) I agree with other readers here that this book could have organized better. For example, the topic of memory leak is scattering in a few chapters instead of in one place. (ii) The pace may be a bit slow for an experienced developer. (iii) Reading a 400+ book is not always easy, I spent a whole week reading it. (iv) This is probably not enough if you want to develop an iphone app but this is a good starting point.
Yes, I will recommend this book to someone who wants to learn Objective-C. Wish there is an 'Effective Objective C' book somewhere, any taker?
Good pace, easy to learn August 14, 2009
M. L. Moore (New Zealand)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I come from a 5 year background in C# .Net.
I found this book well paced. It was perhaps on the slow side for an experienced developer but definately a book that someone could use to learn their first programming language.
I found the 'teach by example' methods of this book extremely use. If you create each program and complete all the exercises at the end of each chapter, you'll get a huge amount out of the book. I read through the entire book and then picked up "iPhone Development: Exploring the SDK" to go through the excersises. This book was great preparation for iPhone development.
Outstanding August 8, 2009
Peter J. Neame (Tampa, FL)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
A perfect introduction to Objective-C. The authors philosophy is that you don't need to know a procedural language (such as C) to learn Objective-C and this may even get in the way, as the thinking process is rather different. Very true. So it's a good start point for beginners.
I started iPhone and Cocoa programming, thinking I could just "pick things up along the way" (I have a light background in various languages, almost all script-based (Perl + R for statistics being the most recent). After a while, I realized I still wasn't sure what was going on sometimes and picked this book up. It made a huge difference.
In addition to Obj-C, the author gives a lot of tips on general good programming style, with the point that if you get it right at the beginning, it shouldn't break later. A good way of going through life, as well as programming.
Easy to read as well.
And the book has a an active website where the author (and readers) provide a ton of extra depth.
This is an excellent companion to Hillegass's Cocoa Programming Guide Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) - and probably should be read first rather than the second!
Great introductory book for novice August 6, 2009
J. Lingle (Murrells Inlet, SC USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I don't have a background in object oriented programming, although I have experience with Perl, CGI, JavaScript, ASP, PHP, and other 'scripting' languages. So the idea of classes, objects, instantiation, and methods were all new to me when I bought this book for the purpose of learning to code apps for the iPhone over the next 6 months.
I'm on Chapter 4, and feel that this is a great book for beginners - although, obviously, the more programming experience you have, of any kind, the better you will understand the material. Concepts are explained clearly, using metaphors that are easy to understand, and there are exercises at the end of each chapter that force you grasp the presented information before moving on. For example, Kochan provides a program that works with fractions in order to present methodology for class creation and object instantiation, that assigns numeric values to variables and prints out the fraction using an NSLog statement. At the end of the chapter, one of the exercises is for the reader to now take what you've learned and write your own program that converts Fahrenheit to Celsius using the same principles. It's important to spend some time on the exercises before moving on - the more practice you get, the better, and this book is great at challenging you in that respect.
With the introduction of the iPhone SDK, who wouldn't want to write apps for the coolest mobile device in history??? After a few months of reading this book, I plan to move on to iPhone SDK Development, which I bought the beta ebook copy of last month. The paperback release will hopefully coincide with my completion of Kochan's book, and I'll be on my way to coding all those cool apps in my head by early 2010!
Showing reviews 16-20 of 73
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