What is Best Approach to Learning iPhone App Dev?

Question

I have basic C knowledge. I am trying to learn iPhone App Development.

Should I first learn ObjC for Mac, using the book by Stephen G. Kochan, then move to transforming these principles to iPhone Dev? Or would learning ObjC without specific iPhone app tutorials first confuse me later when I try to move my ObjC knowledge to iPhone App development? I'm trying to use the best method of quickly learning iPhone App Dev and I'm seeing multiple ways of learning it on forums.

I guess my question is would learning ObjC language, then learning XCode and iPhone App Dev be the right or wrong way towards my end result of learning to code for iPhone? Or, should I learn specific XCode and iPhone App development and leave the time spent on mastering ObjC behind?

Confused and want to spend the next two months as wisely as I can learning iPhone App Dev.

Answer 1

Just start with iPhone. I recommend getting the book "Beginning iPhone Development" by Jeff Lamarche and Dave Mark, published by Apress. And also reading some development blogs (just google iPhone development or something like that for loads of results)

Answer 2

The best way would probably be to learn ObjC first, making sure you understand the concepts and general flow of the language. This would just entail writing a few sample applications (hello world, some projecteuler stuff, etc.) to understand the syntax of the language.

After that, I would suggest going through and writing a small sample Iphone app. Then, when you feel like you're comfortable enough with the language and framework, you can start laying out the architecture of your application.

For specific problems and questions, there's forums, Stack Overflow, IRC chat, etc. that you can get pointers to solve specific things that you're trying to do.

I'm not saying to learn everything there is about ObjC before even starting iPhone dev, but it would help to at least have a grasp on the language so you can make heads or tails of all the tutorials out there.

Answer 3

Get the APress book "Beginning iPhone Development" as mentioned, but in addition I would get "Programming in Objective-C 2.0" by Stephen Kochan and published by Addison Wesley.

Work through the "Beginning iPhone Development" book and supplement your knowledge and understanding of Objective C 2.0 with Kochan's book.

Answer 4

I bought some "iPhone Development for Dummies" book. The book wasn't anything spectacular, but after following along with it for a few chapters (and I do mean not just reading the book, but entrying the code, running the excersizes, etc.) - I was able to get the hang of it after a few days.

Also - I did not know Objective-C when I started - the book had a chapter on it at the beginning - a little overview - but enough of the basics to get me started. I didn't really sweat it - and it never really got in the way. I think trying to learn Objective-C without the scope and context of Cocoa would really just kind of fly past me.

If you're already farmiliar with either C++, or even some other OO language like Java, I would sweat spending too much time learning Objective-C. When it comes down to real-world code, there are only a few things that are really different about it than C++. Also, the XCode IDE helps guide you through a lot of the manual stuff you have to enter - so that's a big help.

Walk through entering, running and debugging a few tutorials, and you'll grasp it quickly.

Answer 5

The "Beginning iPhone Development" book was pretty helpful to me. Also, there's a new Head First book. I haven't gone through this one myself, but I usually like books from the Head First series for learning.

Answer 6

Plenty of online resources: favourites include: cocoaFusion podcast (now part of MDN Show): http://www.mac-developer-network.com/category/shows/podcasts/mdnshow, core intuition: http://coreint.org, and blogs like Cocoa with love: http://cocoawithlove.com

What helped me, if you want to dive into Core Data, is this book: http://pragprog.com/titles/mzcd/core-data

Just discovered this too; free video tutorials for beginners: http://cocoatouchnetcast.com