Whoa. Late on a Saturday night, and my tweet stream has been taken over by obscure points of Objective C syntax. PAAARRR-TAY.
Since my return from the Big Nerd Ranch just over a week ago, I’ve received a number of emails asking “What books are you reading and what would you recommend to those interested in Cocoa?”. Depending on your background, there’s a number of excellent books available. Here’s a low down of some of the books I’ve been enjoying and learning from recently…
Learn C on the Mac ~ Lacking any real background in programming, the first place to start is to learn C. There’s some well-respected books on the language, but they’re also incredibly dry and hard reads. This title from Apress is both approachable and full of the foundations you’ll need.
Learn Objective-C on the Mac ~ The sequel to “Learn C on the Mac”, this is another great title from Apress. Its worth remembering that before you get to the Cocoa framework, you might want to ensure you’re comfortable with Objective-C. This continuation from the C book is well-written, as you might expect, and one of the books used as course text for the first portion of the Cocoa Bootcamp.
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (Third Edition) ~ Widely known as “The Bible” you’ll want a copy of this for your bookshelf. After a bit of preparation with the previous two titles, this book will be the one to tackle: exercises, challenges and more to get you on your way.
Learn Cocoa on the Mac ~ I don’t actually own this one (yet - it’s not on sale until September) however after reading the first two in the series, I’ll be picking up a copy of this alongside the obvious Beginning iPhone Development title too.
There’s tonnes of titles out there for Cocoa: so if you’ve got your own favourite, post it as one of Tumblr’s spiffy Answers.
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