Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide Author: Aaron Hillegass | Language: English | ISBN:
032194206X | Format: EPUB
Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide Description
Want to write iOS apps or desktop Mac applications? This introduction to programming and the Objective-C language is your first step on the journey from someone who uses apps to someone who writes them.
Based on Big Nerd Ranch's popular Objective-C Bootcamp, Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide covers C, Objective-C, and the common programming idioms that enable developers to make the most of Apple technologies. Compatible with Xcode 5, iOS 7, and OS X Mavericks (10.9), this guide features short chapters and an engaging style to keep you motivated and moving forward. At the same time, it encourages you to think critically as a programmer.
Here are some of the topics covered:
- Using Xcode, Apple’s documentation, and other tools
- Programming basics: variables, loops, functions, etc.
- Objects, classes, methods, and messages
- Pointers, addresses, and memory management with ARC
- Properties and Key-Value Coding (KVC)
- Class extensions
- Categories
- Classes from the Foundation framework
- Blocks
- Delegation, target-action, and notification design patterns
- Key-Value Observing (KVO)
- Runtime basics
- Series: Big Nerd Ranch Guides
- Paperback: 325 pages
- Publisher: Big Nerd Ranch Guides; 2 edition (November 28, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 032194206X
- ISBN-13: 978-0321942067
- Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
This book is the perfect place for an experienced developer to start with iOS programming. I say experienced developer because this book does a great job of showing you the basics of C and the Objective-C language, but if you don't understand the basics of programming, you are probably going to get lost. Maybe not, but I found myself saying, "I am glad I already know what that is" about quite a few topics that were used to explain the subject matter. If you are experienced with C#, C, Java, or C++, you will be fine.
This book does a great job of showing you what you need to know to get started with iOS. When you are done with it you should be able to easily move into learning more by reading more books, like iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (4th Edition) . You will need to learn a lot more to be proficient in Xcode and iOS.
The book is broken down into 5 parts. I have summarized each below:
Getting Started (Chapters 1-2)
This first part explains what you can expect from the book, and what the author's expect of you. It then takes you through the steps of creating your first application with Xcode.
How Programming Works (Chapters 3-12)
In this part you get an overview of C. The authors take you on a tour of some programming concepts using the functionality provide by the C language. Topics they cover include Functions, Variables, Types, if/else, Loops, Numbers, Format Strings, Pointers, the Heap, and Structs.
Objective-C and Foundation (Chapters 13-30)
In these chapters the authors take you on a tour of object oriented concepts and Objective-C.
I've been wanting to learn Objective C for a descent while so I can one day soon start creating my own iPhone apps. I'm pretty familiar with programming in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) which is used in your Microsoft Office products for automating certain tasks. In the past, I'd started reading some other books on Objective C, but I always tended to put them down after a few days of reading. The main reason was that they'd jump head long into something totally foreign to me at times and only briefly explain it. So I was left grasping for straws at times to understand things.
This book however does a great job of explaining the fundamentals of Objective C. It starts off with the fundamentals of programming that are pretty identical among most modern programming languages. So if you've programmed some in another programming language the material covered seems pretty familiar, you just are really noting the slight differences in the language compared to the one you are used to.
From there they slowly expand into other topics, working in a gradual way with short manageable chapters that make you seem like you're flying through the material. The material is concise and not real in depth. And for people like me, that want to know what everything in the code example means, they let you know when to be patient and when they're going to cover it later.
About the only complaint I can make so far is that they mention about using the File menu. And for those of you used to PC's, there really is no File menu that I can find so far in the XCode 5 program. So when you're at the very beginning of learning how to open the program and shut it down they don't really guide you by hand so-to-speak on how to do the very basics, of using XCode 5 like they should.
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