Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

by Aaron Hillegass

Book Overview

Cocoa is one of the principal object-oriented software development environments for Mac OS X. This volume is a serious developer's guide to Cocoa. It offers start-to-finish coverage from the creator... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201726831
• ISBN13: 9780201726831
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent but does not cover well bindings...

This book is simply excellent. It really goes into what cocoa is all about one step at a time. Starting with a very simple app and slowly getting into more complex topics like undo, drag and drop, etc... It is full of screenshot, so you can easily implement the examples on your own. Everything is neatly detailed, with a lot of 'click here', 'drag this object from here to there' to make sure you are not lost using interface builder. Of course, don't think that you can go through this book without knowing obj-c. This is NOT an obj-c intro (some people were complaining about this in other reviews !!) Come on... If you want to learn obj-c, simply get 'Programming in Objective-C' by Stephen G. Kochan... The only problem with this book is that the technology is moving really fast. Apple is really taking care of its developers and introducing new concepts/ideas all the time... So, it makes it hard for any book to really stay up to date... Two major new technologies not (well) covered in this book are: 1/ Bindings (not well covered) This second edition has been updated to cover some of the new 10.3 topics/tools, but I don't believe Aaron spend nearly enough time on 'cocoa bindings'. They completely change the way you approach an application and litteraly save you hours by taking care of all the 'glue code'. CocoaDevCentral has some amazing articles which really show you how powerful bindings can be. Check out this one for instance and see for yourself: http://cocoadevcentral.com/articles/000080.php 2/ Core Data (too new to be covered) Core Data, a new Tiger technology is (of course) not covered. Another amazing technology which will help you get rid of a lot of glue code. Again, check these 2 articles on CocoaDevCentral: http://cocoadevcentral.com/articles/000086.php http://cocoadevcentral.com/articles/000085.php Apple keeps amazing me ;-)

Well done step by step tutorial

This book falls somewhere inbetween Beginner and Intermediate. It's a beginners book in that it assumes no background in Cocoa or Objective-C. It's kind of intermediate in that having at least programming experience in some language will be of great help. The book does not start with a lot of philosophy, instead it goes through a step-by-step process to wrtie the first application. This is done with some good explanations and a lot of screen shots. The author is a teacher of Cocoa, and he wrote this book to use in his classes. After writing the firt edition he used it for a couple of years, enough to understand where the problems might lie. Now he's done a second edition based on what he learned in teaching the first book, and the changes that Apple has made in the software. This book is tutorial, not a reference book. It leads you through the process step by step. Then there is a fairly extensive index so that you can look up points later. Highly Recommended.

Getting started in Cocoa

First, I have to say I loved this book, I actually read half of it on a trip, not being in front of my computer, and still enjoyed the clear style and the gradual addition of new concepts and tools, chapter after chapter. Then I could hardly wait to be back home and start doing it for real.Now for the potential buyer.WHAT IT IS NOT: a reference book (no list of classes etc...) or a technical book for advanced programming; a book about Java or Carbon; an introduction to object-oriented programming; an introduction to C.WHAT IT IS: an excellent introduction to programming in Objective C in the Cocoa environment of Max OS X, provided you know enough about object-oriented programming (some basic understanding of C++ is preferable too).WHAT YOU LEARN: Objective-C in Cocoa; using Apple Developer Tools; building an application in Mac OS X; how to make optimal use of Cocoa classes and API, knowing how they were conceived and meant to be used; a number of basic concepts and tips that really get you started.THE PLUS that make this book so interesting: very good and clear writing; some amusing brief 'historical' insights; you really feel the author knows what he is talking about; the author gives personal views (clearly stated as advices, not rules); follow-up, errata, examples, comments, and more on his web site; still completely useable with OS X.2 (a couple or very minor changes that are listed on the web site anyway), so that's the good time to buy it (price is down, but content is still up to date).Final comment: Objective C in Max OS X is very powerful and enjoyable.

Not Perfect, But Highly Recommended

This was the book I had been waiting for, or at least ONE OF the books I had been waiting for, to really get started with Cocoa programming. The O'Reilly book, as has been mentioned plenty of times here, leaves a lot to be desired, and while it was better than nothing, a wall still remained between me and Cocoa after finishing it.After reading Cocoa Programming for OS X, I feel I can say I "get" Cocoa finally. That's not to say I'm an expert, but that I can complete a simple program now, on my own, using the Cocoa frameworks and concepts. As Aaron says in the book, learing the Cocoa APIs will take much longer. I come from a Java background, with only marginal C and C++ experience. Although Aaron does not speak much about the objective-c language itself, that's ok. Apple's PDF is more than adequate to get that background.There are some things that get glossed over that I wish had been more fully explained, and some things left out altogether that I would have liked to see, such as: -- Spawning and managing multiple threads, thread safety issues -- exception handling, debugging and assertions -- Cocoa "primitive" objects (NSPoint, NSRect, NSRange, etc.), why they apparently don't need to be retained or released, and why they are "NS" objects but don't really behave like them. -- Calling Toolbox routines or those from APIs that have not yet been "Cocoa-ized" (and integrating the Old Way into the Cocoa Way), with examples. Cocoa is nice but once you get away from building a text editor, you will need to dig into this ugly and unfriendly world at some point (unfortunately). For instance, how do I access the Airport card, how do I open and use a network socket, how can I read a DV-encoded stream from a FireWirePort and save it to disk as a QuickTime movie, how do I access a database, how do I use an OpenGL view? -- How to customize Cocoa UI elements. Like if I wanted an NSSlider with TWO sliders, a minimum and a maximum. There is an example of subclassing an NSView in the book, but that's just a drawing panel.To be fair, I'm not really criticizing Aaron for these things. The book has plenty of useful stuff, and I'm sure Aaron wants to write and sell more books, so some advanced Cocoa books that address some of these things as well as others will be welcome...I hope someone is writing them right now. I also hope someone is writing a comprehensive Cocoa API reference, as Apple's is somewhat lacking (Have you seen the phrase "Description Forthcoming" more times than you care to remember? I thought so.)The bottom line is that this is a great book that is a must-have for anyone interested in Cocoa programming. I'd probably rate it four or four-and-a-half stars, but I'm giving it five for being there when I needed it, and being the first really useful book on the subject. The best thing I can say about it is that I can now do things there is simply no way I could have before.

Fantastic Cocoa Resource

Before reading this book, I highly recommend you read the "Object-Oriented Programming and the Objective C Language" document from [...] Forcing myself through the concentrated, dry spec made it easier to understand, enjoy, and appreciate Mr. Hillegass' wonderful explanations. My favorite aspect of this book is that the author gets you into writing sample apps right away. After the 3rd chapter I felt like I knew the tools and environment well enough to write a very simple Cocoa app (like beginning programming excersize type things). I love how he takes you through the tools and shows you how to use them in the context of writing the sample program. When he explains concepts I feel like he does a very good job of giving concrete examples of when you would use such concepts in code. The author's writing style felt like he was talking or lecturing to me, but without making me feel like a little kid. This book is NOT for you if you do NOT have any background in Object-Oriented Programming or if you do NOT have any background in C or C++ (you need to understand pointers and memory management in order to learn ObjC from this reference).