Starting Out

I was thinking about learning how to tinker around with developing, nothing too big, just things that I can point at and say, "I made that". I have Xcode or whatever on my Powerbook, and I was wondering how one would get started in messing around with it.

Ditto, I just pulled it out and installed it, I am interested too, just for the fun of it, I remember when I was a kid, our first computer was an Apple IIE I think, I remember teaching myself basic on it, I made a picture of a tree and grass and other things kids too, my parents were amazed (I wasnt very old)

now Im all grown up and wanna learn again, anyone help us with our curiosity?
what the heck do these xcode tools enable us to do? how do we start learning?

I would suggest getting the Oreilly book "Building Cocoa Applications: A Step by Step Guide"
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/buildcocoa/

It is not great but it does not make me want to vomit blood either.

MacDevCenter is also a nice resource:

http://macdevcenter.com/

And finally you have the developer pages at Apple:

http://developer.apple.com/

Hope that helps.

Awesome, thanks for the reply, so you suggest we learn "cocoa" first?

Not necessarily, but it is not a bad language if you are looking at Mac develpment in specific. Objective C is an OK language in general but it is not seen much off of Macs (see NextStep). I find it interesting as sort of a step between C and Java.

C# is similar in that matter but not the best language for Mac development at this time.

Java is a bit more cross platform but more useful server side than for client code. Java 1.5 offers some significant improvements client side though (still needs more work).

C and C++ have better performance (C generally better than C++) but are more complicated. I would not suggest coding C or C++ from XCode, use CodeWarrior.

Python is a scripting language but not a bad one to learn the basics of Object Oriented Design in. I am not sure if XCode can edit Python though, I would use SubEthaEdit for that.

For the "really serious" there is Assembler, but that is an advanced topic and it has been almost a decade since I last coded anything even moderately complex in Assembler. Regardless it is not where you want to start.


The more languages you learn the more you realize that they are all basically the same (except Assembler). Each has their unique qualities but once you get past syntax, the discipline and structured thought learned in one carries over to the others.

Wow, thanks for the thought you put into that, reputation given

So it sounds like cocoa or Java are both good choices for starting points.....

Im kinda excited in a nerdy sorta way

i always overlook this forum and yet here i am finding what i wanted to know about programming.