Programming iOS 5 is the perfect guide to learning Xcode for developing iOS apps. Unfortunately for those starting from scratch or with only a knowledge of web languages to assist them the book is virtually impenetrable.
Hello world examples hold no currency for Neuburg, and so he belittles them. He also refuses to turn his programming guide into a cookbook for others to blindly follow. He insists on integrity and rigour instead.
While I agree entirely with Neuburg now I have reached the stage of understanding clearly his text - almost a year after beginning to experiment with Xcode, and attempting without success to make sense of Programming iOS 4 - this creates a gap that readers must cross before they are ready to understand this text. And reading the in-depth guide to C, as suggested by Neuburg, offers no solace.
How then do we ford this gap? One way is to watch Paul Hegarty's Stanford lectures on iTunes U. He gives examples and works through them clearly, but even these become too complex too quickly for an absolute beginner. How about an iOS cookbook? No, that didn't work for me either. Apple must surely supply a user-friendly introduction? No, it soon becomes dense, and has outdated code and samples.
The best way to start learning that I found was to figure out how to do the most basic of things first. How, for example to change the background colour of a view. And then build up from there: making the view change on the click of a button, then making it change back again when it is clicked again, next making it cycle through a range of colours. I then figured out subclassing and how methods worked.
Next, all the things that Hegarty talks about I basically googled and read about in blogs, forums and on Stack Overflow until they made sense. (Following Hegarty's homework assignments were a step beyond me when starting out!)
This rough and ready, cut and paste (hacker?) approach, eventually prepared me to return to Neuburg and to actually understand what the terms C struct, pointer, array, etc., etc. mean without having the life scared out of me by typedef enum.
Now I'm beginning to read Neuburg's text again (or at least the second - iOS 5 - edition) but this time with fresh (educated) eyes. As I do so, I'm taking lengthy notes and may well report back when I'm finished.
Hello world examples hold no currency for Neuburg, and so he belittles them. He also refuses to turn his programming guide into a cookbook for others to blindly follow. He insists on integrity and rigour instead.
While I agree entirely with Neuburg now I have reached the stage of understanding clearly his text - almost a year after beginning to experiment with Xcode, and attempting without success to make sense of Programming iOS 4 - this creates a gap that readers must cross before they are ready to understand this text. And reading the in-depth guide to C, as suggested by Neuburg, offers no solace.
How then do we ford this gap? One way is to watch Paul Hegarty's Stanford lectures on iTunes U. He gives examples and works through them clearly, but even these become too complex too quickly for an absolute beginner. How about an iOS cookbook? No, that didn't work for me either. Apple must surely supply a user-friendly introduction? No, it soon becomes dense, and has outdated code and samples.
The best way to start learning that I found was to figure out how to do the most basic of things first. How, for example to change the background colour of a view. And then build up from there: making the view change on the click of a button, then making it change back again when it is clicked again, next making it cycle through a range of colours. I then figured out subclassing and how methods worked.
Next, all the things that Hegarty talks about I basically googled and read about in blogs, forums and on Stack Overflow until they made sense. (Following Hegarty's homework assignments were a step beyond me when starting out!)
This rough and ready, cut and paste (hacker?) approach, eventually prepared me to return to Neuburg and to actually understand what the terms C struct, pointer, array, etc., etc. mean without having the life scared out of me by typedef enum.
Now I'm beginning to read Neuburg's text again (or at least the second - iOS 5 - edition) but this time with fresh (educated) eyes. As I do so, I'm taking lengthy notes and may well report back when I'm finished.
Nueburg's book is quite thorough and contains knowledge on the ins and outs of iOS and Cocoa. There is a lot of info in there that I haven't found anywhere else. But (as you yourself say) it isn't suitable for someone starting out (and neither does it claim to be aimed at that level). I think trying to learn iOS programming without (at least) having a decent handle on C first is going to be too much for someone trying to take it all in in one go.
ReplyDeleteOne might take a look at Kochan's Objective-C - although I recall having found some inaccuracies in it when I read some parts of an older edition, but beginners seem to swear by it. Or one could start with "Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide" and follow it up with "iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide" (the better option in my opinion).
AK: Absolutely, and thanks for the suggestions. Neuberg's book is a godsend for iOS programming and I wouldn't be without it.
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