Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

I can't say enough good about this book.After $150 in other books and about a month of tutorials, code snippets, reading the stackoverflow website, playing around with examples, getting a small iOS app functioning, and trying to read Apple's documentation, the 4 days I've had this book have been revelatory. I've learned more and made more progress in 4 days than I did in 10x the hours and effort and money in the previous month. Which would be frustrating if I weren't so happy about having found the book.Proof that a book, a teaching methodology, and a perspective on a subject can make a world of difference to the student.Aaron has you writing example programs in every chapter, and they all work flawlessly. The challenges are accessible and tempting enough that I've done them all. He has you thinking like a programmer would think, and no detail that might derail you is left out or left unexplained. The chapters are the epitome of concise brevity, and are written so well and so completely, with concepts explained so succinctly, that I really am just amazed - first solid computer book I've ever seen or read.I'm starting chapter 17 now, and am halfway through the book. I understand and can use nsstrings, nsarrays, objects, methods, I know what the stack and heap are, can use references and pointers, I know how objective-c was written from c (and why), I can tell you the address in which is value is held on the stack.. and I can use Xcode so much more proficiently than ever before. I just wrote a program to read in two files, copy them into arrays, and then compare the elements of the arrays against each other to see if they are equivalent. The book has given context to everything I've seen and not understood. It answers the WHY behind it all, and while written for an intelligent person, presumes no real prior knowledge.Very highly recommended. I also purchased the new 3rd edition of The Big Nerd Ranch iOS Programming book, and have it sitting here waiting for me to finish this one. It's about 3x thicker than this Obj-C book, and presumes a bit more knowledge.. so as a starting point: HIGHLY recommended --> Objective-C Programming by Nerd Ranch.

I must say that as a retired programmer who came from the PC world (via mini's prior to that) I was surprised at how much I could not grasp Objective-C. Granted, the last C/C++ code I had written was some 15 years ago, but really how hard could it be to grasp a new syntax? Was I ever in for a surprise!After taking the smart move to start using Apple products in 2009 I got bitten by the bug to write some software to support a hobby, maybe even sell it if I could get it to work. I started programming computers in 1968 (no minis or PCs then) and kept up (more or less) until 2000, so this should be fairly easy. After all, Apple gives away the developer tools and provides a massive amount of guidance... well, okay maybe I need some hand holding here. I tried another highly recommended book and indeed it did clear up some of the confusion but I was still left somewhat adrift. I thought to myself, I need a book on Cocoa programming, and besides, it seemed as if Apple was changing the tools, operating system, etc.; every time I seemed to start to get a handle what was going on, another change happened.I saw that Aaron Hillegass seemed like the "go to" author for folks wanting to understand Cocoa and he had a 4th edition of his Cocoa Programming book coming out shortly covering all the changes in the tools, operating system, etc. So I pre-ordered it and while I was here at Amazon and poking around I saw that he had a newer edition of his Objective-C Programming (this book) and it was on Kindle for a reasonable price. Since I had to wait for the Cocoa book I bought it and downloaded it.Let me say that if you know nothing of programming, this book will give you the tools to begin to understand what is going on. Indeed, it will teach you what you need to know to actually do some basic C and Objective-C programming if you are a complete novice. If you have a programming background (doesn't really matter what language) this book will tell you all you need to understand about entry level Objective-C. If you are an experienced C or C++ programmer and don't just blow off reading the parts you think you know, you can blast through this book in a couple of weeks and do everything in it, including the challenges.The point is, if you are having a hard time understanding Objective-C, no matter what your level of programming experience, this book can walk you through the pitfalls and mysteries that seem to leap out at every turn in the Apple documentation. Are some of the new things Apple introduced in Xcode worrisome? Aaron gets you going painlessly. Is ARC giving you trouble? Aaron explains it and points out its pitfalls and where you can still leak memory. If you don't know what that is, you need this book anyway.All I can say, is even an old programmer can learn new tricks and this may be the best self-paced training guide I have ever used. I can only hope my new Cocoa Programming book (arrived a couple of days ago) is as wonderful as this one proved to be. Thank you Aaron Hillegass for showing me the way.

Which book?So, you are a person wishing to enter the realm of object oriented programming, or more specifically, you want to learn how to write apps for the Mac, for IOS devices like the iPhone, the iPad, or any of the other IOS devices Apple has produced.Perhaps after reading other material on this subject, your wondering if you have what it takes?I've read several books, well at least partially. I say partially because after reading partially through the material I began to realize I wasn't getting it, and ended up abandoning the book.I am determined however, to learn this material, and so should you! because this is a big realm and getting bigger.Indeed it is not easy, so my advise to you is, get a good book! It makes all the difference!I came across this book, after having tried 4 others, and unsuccessfully grasping the basics that are so necessary. I came hear to amazon and read a few reviews, and that is what brought me to this book. I then did a little research about the author and his company, and was very impressed. Indeed this seemed to be exactly the education I was looking for, so I bought it.The book arrived the very next day (amazon is fast, wow!), and I began my studies. The book is well written, with very few mistakes (typos) all the way through. It has many excersizes that are well thought out, and if you get stuck which happened to me many times, you can go to the forum supported by the book to seek answers, or to compare code from your excersizes. The forum is a busy place with people who are always there ready to help, where no question is too dumb or obvious to ask. The people there many of them who work for the company (Big Nerd Ranch) frequent the forums several times a day and make everyone feel welcome.This book coupled with the forum, makes for an self taught educational experience which is unmatched by a long shot.I am so happy I got this book, it really made a believer out of me.Before this book, I haven't done any programming in over ten years. I wanted to break into the IPhone app development field, but was afraid that I wouldn't be able to catch up, after all I had never programmed in an object orientated language before, and heard it was difficult, but I was determined to give it a good try.I studied everyday for most of the day, and after about a month I completed this book. Im still a beginner, but Im much more confident now, and am ready to take on more.I believe in my self again!Now off to study "IOS Programming 3rd edition"Thank you Big Nerd RanchIf your serious about learning Objective-C, and your just a beginner.Get this book!!!Don't forget the Forum!!!

Un libro bastante bueno para aprender las bases de Objetive-C. Lo recomiendo leer a todos aquellos que quieran aprender a programar IOS antes de empezar con el desarrollo en IOS.Los primeros capítulos dan nociones básicas de C (si ya se conoce C se pueden obviar) y posteriormente se va profundiizando en distintos aspectos de Objetive-C de una manera muy práctica.

Pur non essendo il libro più completo sul linguaggio Objective-C (tralascia alcuni argomenti più avanzati), tratta quasi tutto, concentrandosi (a differenza di molti altri testi), sugli aspetti più recenti del linguaggio (ARC, i blocks, etc...).È estremamente chiaro e pieno di esempi utili a comprendere al meglio l'uso del linguaggio e del framework Foundation.Presenta i concetti man mano che si rendono necessari e ha un approccio che spinge a capire il perché delle cose e ad affrontare autonomamente lo studio degli argomenti tralasciati (ad esempio le classi e i metodi non presentati) autonomamente.È a mio avviso il miglior modo di avvicinarsi all'Objective-C in ambito Apple (iOS e Mac OS X).

This is a short, well written book. My Kindle says it has 263 pages but a lot of pages contain screenshots and other helpful pictures.The book can roughly be divided into three parts.The first part is an introduction to the C programming language. It introduces concepts like functions, variables, expressions, conditionals and requires no prior programming knowledge. Only little Objective-C is sprinkled in at this point.The second third deals with Objective-C. The language is not only demonstrated theoretically but by writing small amounts of code directly in the Xcode IDE. That way you will learn the important language concepts and navigating the Xcode along the way. This repeated 'concept, code, compile in Xcode' cycle helped me a lot getting up to speed with the language very quickly.The last third applies that new knowledge by building two applications, one for iOS and one for Cocoa. It ends with some advanced topics on C and Objective-C.After reading this book I am tempted to think I could have picked up Objective-C from Wikipedia and the official Apple documentation on my own; Objective-C feels like such a modest but well designed step away from C that it is not very hard to learn if you already know some C. But the bits of information on iOS and especially X-Code that are additionally explained make me glad I chose this book so I could learn Objective-C directly within the eco system I plan to use.I highly recommend this very motivational book.

I am most of the way through this book and I feel that I have learned a lot. With great pleasure I completed writing an Objective-C program last night that solves Sudoku puzzles. Amazingly, it works. Although I had a little knowledge of C from long ago, really I was starting from scratch with this book. So the point about my Sudoku program is that this book must have done its job, because that's all I used (almost). At the same time, the book is not easy (because its subject is not easy), and you have to work at it. I'd say that it is essential to work through the examples and the exercises ('challenges'). My only wish is that there were more challenges, since there is no substitute for writing one's own code (and finding that it doesn't work and fixing it). Although I'd have liked more challenges, the book does have enough for its purposes. I did augment the book a bit by using other resources, such as the Wibit <[...]> iPad courses. It is sometimes useful to have another perspective on the same topic. But although those other resources were helpful, this book by Hillegass was sufficient to teach me all I needed to know. By the way, this book will take you as far as designing and building very simple iOS and Mac OS apps, but to go much further than that you will need the next book in this series. But no serious book could take you far into iOS programming from scratch, so that comment is just for information for readers.