|
My college degree is a B.A. in Computer Science from Western Connecticut State University, but I only programmed for about a year after leaving school. I come from a long line of salesmen, and somebody figured out that I could sell. It was downhill from there. I have done a bit of programming since I left school, but my recent programming experience has been limited to Excel macros, some scripting and batch files. It’s very frustrating to my inner geek, and I have been looking for somewhere to satisfy my programming itch. I have looked into programming for .Net, and while it’s very practical and resume-worthy, I have decided to pursue programming on the Mac. There are many reasons for this decision, besides my love of the platform, including the very interesting language Cocoa (more on that later), the opportunity to write software on a relatively new platform, and the speed at which I can develop software. I want to take you on a journey with me as I learn how to program on the Mac under OS X. I’ll share with you the books, Web sites, and other resources I use to learn how to develop software. If you want to learn how to program on Windows, don’t despair. I’m sure another DACS writer will take up the mantle and do something similar for Visual Basic .Net or C#. If not, I might do it just for the experience. I’ve been preparing for this article for a while, and I’ve already collected some of the tools I plan to use: OS X - Panther. When you spend your $129 to get the latest version of Apple’s OS X you get an unexpected surprise: a free, full version of Apple’s Xcode development environment. Windows XP doesn’t include the $99 Visual Basic .Net or C# tools. Apple’s Developer Program. Another freebie. Apple has made the “Online” level of the developer program free, so you get access to a lot of the information professional developers use. I plan to make extensive use of this valuable resource, including the white papers, documents, and tutorials.Web sites. There are too many Cocoa sites to mention, but a few stand out as resources I will be using on regular basis. WWW.MacDevCenter.com, run by O’Reilly, has some of the best information on programming for the Mac. I have been putting a list of Cocoa sites together, and I’ll let you know which ones helped me to get proficient. Books. I love books, and I have already collected the top Cocoa books to help me get started, including Learning Cocoa with Objective-C (O’Reilly), Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (Addison Wesley), and Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X (Peachpit Press). I spend quite a bit of time at bookstores, so if any other Cocoa books look interesting, I’ll let you know. This journey begins over the holiday break, and I’ll give you the next update in our February issue. I plan on getting familiar with the Xcode environment and getting my first program to work. I’ll also let you know what I think of the resources mentioned above. If you make it to the January meeting, I’ll have some free copies of the first edition of the O’Reilly MacDeveloper Journal CD magazine to hand out. |
|
|
|