11.07.09
Learning Objective-C
Like many many people who have decided to jump (maybe a bit too late) onto the IPhone development bandwagon, I have had to do two things I never thought I would do!
- Buy a Mac (a lovely little mac-mini)
- Learn how to write code in Objective-C (the bastard unwanted love-child of C, C++ and Small-talk)
Its been great fun, and I’ve learnt a few things on the way. While I have a long way to go, I’ve already run foul of Apples policy of silence – buying my mac-mini 3 weeks before they released a new beefier version with double the memory of the one I purchased.
I eventually purchased an IPhone about 5 months ago after starting off with a loathing of them when they were initially released and slowly gaining a gruding respect for them as more and more of my friends turned up in the pub with them, before it turning into a burning ‘I MUST HAVE ONE’. This got so bad that I bought myself out of the last 9 months of my 3 contract to change to O2 so I could get an Iphone.
I havent been disappointed. I like many others find that the IPhone is what I have been looking for for the last 3 or 4 years since phones began to get ‘smart’ but not quite smart enough.
- [NSString init]
I then moved on as a developer to needing to write apps for it. I swallowed my pride and after several false starts where I went into the apple store stared for a while and walked out, I finally one day came out with a Mac-mini under my arm. After two solid days of downloading (upgrade os, critical updates, xcode, sdk) I finally sat down to see what I could do. That is when I came face to face with Objective-C. I spend most of my programming career writing Delphi code and never managed to learn either C or C++ infact the only { language I have any knowledge of is php but I think thats where the similarity ends.
I took a look at the rather interesting Stanford IPhone course which is available for download via ITunes University, but after a couple of failed attempts at connecting things in Interface Builder I abandoned ship went Old-fashioned and bought a book on Amazon: Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
This book has been well worth it and I am slowing working my way through it. Objective-C is slowly begining to make sense. I am begining to understand it in terms of other languages which makes it a bit easier. I will write here as I work my way along.
