Re: Really learning ObjC

[Daniel J Farrell]

Hi Stefan,

You sound a lot like me two years ago! :o)

I'm in the last year of a physics PhD and, in the last 2 years, have  
spent a LOT of time doing number crunching and physical modelling in  
objective-c. Kochan's Objective-C book is the only book that made to  
whole object oriented approach mean anything for me. Like you, I  
spent a few years in MATLAB so it took me a little while to  
understand why objects are so useful.

Get the book, spend a few weeks going thought the first few chapters,  
and don't look back. It's money well spent.

Although not an introduction to OO programming, Nicola have some  
great tutorials on how to use foundation GNUStep class (which I still  
refer back to!):
http://www.gnustep.it/nicola/Tutorials/

In particular, for science programming, I have found NSArray,  
NSDictonary, NSData to be very useful (and there mutable counter  
parts), from Foundation. In the GUI side of things I mostly have use  
NSBezierPath for some simple data plotting. GNUStep has a lot to  
offer science folks, so stick at it.

Another good resource would be the programming forum at www.macosx.com.

Cheers,

Dan.








On 19 Feb 2007, at 20:22, Stefan Bidigaray wrote:

> So I've been thinking about really learning ObjC recently.  I mean,  
> I know how to read the code in most programs, but I wouldn't have a  
> clue if someone were to ask me do write code.  I can do C pretty  
> well for an Engineer but I'm oblivious to some of the language's  
> functionality, mainly the O.O.ness!  I've read all the material  
> available online, but most of it doesn't go as in-depth as I'd  
> like, and other go way too in-depth for my level.  Since I learned  
> most of what I know about C from "Programming in C" I thought I'd  
> invest on the book "Programming in Objective C".  I was wondering  
> what is the general consensus about this book?  Amazon also  
> recommends "Cocoa Programming for MacOS X", how's that book?  I  
> know there's some stuff on it on the main page, but I'd like to  
> know if it's useful for GNUstep.  I don't have a Mac, so I'd have  
> to do the examples and exercises in GNUstep!
>
> Both books have fairly high ratings, and I know from experience  
> Kochan is a great instructor (why I decided on "Programming with  
> Objective C")!  Is this a pair of books you guys would recommend  
> for someone coming into GNUstep with only procedural languages  
> experience (I only really know Pascal, C and MATLAB)?
>
> Thanks,
> Stefan
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss-gnustep mailing list
> Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep