Learning development for the iPhone

Question

Hello,

I have decided to enter the iPhone App development arena and as such have a couple of questions:

• Coming from a business management background and having no experience/knowledge whatsoever in developing, what would be the right way to start?

• I am aware that I should learn Objective C, to begin with; as well as OOP etc... will reading books and fiddling with iPhone SDK put me on the right track?

What else do I need?

P.S: I am very aware that this will/might be daunting to begin with but I am prepared and motivated.

Thanks in advance for the useful replies ;)

Answer 1

You will be best served if you have a Mac. Here is another post for you to look at. It pretty much talks to your concerns.

Answer 2

I'd recommend following tutorials to get familiar with things.

I like http://icodeblog.com/

Answer 3

Here is what i did ( although i am from a programming background ).oder important

• Intel based mac

• Join dev program ( this could be the last step , but i wanted to something to keep my motivation high :) )

• Read first 6 chapters of Programming in Objective-C 2.0

• started watching stanford iphone course ( available on itunes )

• Started reading the grape-fruit book ( while referring to 3 for obj c questions )

• Review tutorials/projects from appsmuck

• Figure out how to use apple documentation as reference

• Subscribe to iphone blogs / podcasts like mobile orchard / iphone devs twitter accounts ( there are several good ones )

• Add iphone cocoa xcode objective c tags to stackoverflow account

Update I was just reading this from prag programmers ..seems like high level overview that answers your question.

Answer 4

If you have no development experience I would suggest starting on something other than the iPhone. Even a few days learning the ropes would make starting on the iPhone much easier.

Something like Python would allow you to play around and learn about programming and OO in a more forgiving environment than Objective C. Even some experienced programmers have some difficulties with memory management and the various foibles of the Cocoa touch frameworks. Obviously you'll need to learn all that at some point but trying to learn the basic principles of programming at the same time as fighting segmentation faults is a tall order.