I have started learning Objective C with no prior programming experience from the 'Become an X-Coder' eBook (http://download.cocoalab.com.s3.amazonaws.com/BecomeAnXcoder.pdf). My question is, if I want to be doing iPhone development, am I going in the right direction? Am I learning the wrong language, or should I be learning Cocoa Touch? As I said, I have no prior experience, and just need someone to point me in the right direction. Apoligies if I have put this in the wrong place. Thanks very much for your time.
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The short answer is that Cocoa Touch is Objective-C. And now for the long answer...
Objective-C is the essence of Cocoa Touch, which refers to the frameworks which are built by Apple for iOS development. So basically, if you are learning Objective-C, you are learning part of Cocoa Touch. Cocoa touch refers specifically to the code libraries and frameworks written for the iPhone and iPad.
If you are starting out, you may want to learn C and then Objective-C. However, it's totally up to you. It may be helpful to know C, but not required.
If you decide to go with Objective-C as a first language, I recommend getting some books on the Objective-C language as well as some books on iOS development. I have read Head First iPhone Development (O'Reilly)Amazon | Google and Sams Teach Yourself iPhone Development in 24 hours (Amazon). Someone recommended looking into a publisher called Apress, but I haven't yet. There are also some great blogs to look at once you you get started. Matt Gallagher's Cocoa with Love is not a beginners blog, but it has some nice information there.
Finally, feel free to ask specific questions here on Stackoverflow and don't forget to use Google.
Good luck!
Moshe
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Thank you very much for clearing things up for me :) – Ali Jan 03 '11 at 15:45
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Personally, I started with Beginning iPhone Development by Jeff LaMarche. I liked the pace of the book and there were great relevant notes throughout the text as you went through sample projects.
After I felt a bit more comfortable with the language/platform, I dove into the three20 project. There's something super satisfying about being able to load up complex UI components, which three20 let's you do fairly easily. Plus, I found it a great way to find patterns on writing Objective-C.
Finally, I'd subscribe to a few Objective-C/iPhone blogs. Here are some that I read:
- Able Pear: http://blog.ablepear.com/
- Cocoanetics: http://www.cocoanetics.com/blog/
- iPhone Programming Tutorial: http://icodeblog.com/
- iDev Recipes: http://idevrecipes.com/ (really great idea)
- Marco: http://www.marco.org/
- Ole Begemann: http://oleb.net/
- Ray Wenderlich: http://www.raywenderlich.com/
- Jeff LaMarche: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/
Wish you the best of luck!
donkim
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Objective-C is the place to start. I would suggest Programming in Objective-C by Kochan and then move to iPhone Programming The Big Nerd Ranch Guide by Conway and Hillegass. As mentioned by others, I wouldn't start with C... Go Objective-C then a focus on iOS.
