New to iOS development. Where do I start?

Hello all!

First time in this part of the forum

I'm in need of some direction and guidance. A quick background; I'm very solid in all the basics (HTML, CSS) and know a bit of php, and have messed a little with Ruby on Rails in the recent past. Very solid with wordpress as well and work with it on a daily basis.

The things that I haven't even come close to touching and regret not doing sooner is actual software programming and engineering. I have no C, Objective C, etc experience. This is something I've really wanted to learn, understand and become very proficient at for some time now, and there is no time like now.

There's a massive amount of resources, tools, tutorials, instructional etc out there, this I know. But I really have no idea where to start. What language do I dive into, resources and so on. The end goal is to become a very solid app developer, but it won't come easy or quickly, I'm not at all under the mindset that I'll be in the app store within weeks or months. I've spent the last 10 years of my life in e-commerce, seo, sem, marketing, and simple programming world, I know the task that sits before me.

So guys...where do I start? Any advice is very much appreciated!

If you want to make native iOS apps, then there really is only one sensable choice, and that
is the Objective-C language.
Yes you could learn C++ or Java to make iPhone apps, but they would not be able to
harness the power of the Cocoa Touch Frameworks, in the same native way that
Objective-C can.

If you want to make Mac OSX apps, then you could choose any of the C languages, or java, or any other number of programming and scripting languages, but again I would personaly
recommend learning either Objective-C, or C++.

If you decide to go the Objective-C route, then these books listed below, I would highly
recommend, they are written by people who teach Objective-C, and iPhone programming,
in highly acclaimed coarses.

First read this one, it will teach you the basics of ANSI C, and lead you on to a good
understanding of Objective-C.

Amazon.com: Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (Big Nerd Ranch Guides) (9780321706287): Aaron Hillegass: Books

Only after reading and understanding the work in this book, should you move on to one
of these two books, which are also great learning tools, but dont move on to one of these,
unless you really get the first one.

Amazon.com: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (4th Edition) (9780321774088): Aaron Hillegass, Adam Preble: Books

Amazon.com: iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (3rd Edition) (Big Nerd Ranch Guides) (9780321821522): Joe Conway, Aaron Hillegass: Books

Hope this is of some help.

Regards Mark

Mark,

Sorry for the late reply! Thank you so much for such a detailed and helpful response to my question! I've taken notes on it and already jotted down the names of the books you recommended. I'm going to have one big ibook library at the end of this

One thing that I'm hearing a lot is to start with the VERY VERY basics of C before jumping strait into objective c. Nothing too hardcore with C, but just the basics to understand the foundation or how to solve future problems with objective C. That shouldn't take very long and then could move directly into objective c where I'm sure I'll have many a long time figuring out the most simple tasks. Would you recommend this route as well?

Again, thank you so much!

Objective-C is a superset of the C language and if you get a book that will teach you Objective-C, they usually start with the basics of C and then introduce OOP and Obj-C shortly after.

The thing to remember is that C is not a OOP language while Obj-C is and you want to learn to do the right things from the get go..

So basically, as you are learning Obj-C, you will be learning C as well..