Book Mania

Thanks to Vinoodle for pointing me to Antonio Cangiano’s blog, and A preliminary review of three Cocoa and Objective-C related books., where he has some very kind words for AMOSXP.

One book I like to point folks to, particularly folks who already know how to program and/or already know C (which don’t always necessarily occur at the same time :-), is Andrew Duncan’s Objective-C Pocket Reference If you can find it, that is. I see with horror that it’s currently unavailable via Amazon and Barnes’N’Ignoble.

It’s a mercifully short book, especially compared with the giant C++/Java in a NutCaseShell books, and it hits the important goodies that Objective-C adds. It even talks about the extra syntax relating to Distributed Objects.

I also have to plug Learn Objective-C on the Macintosh (a.k.a. LoC), co-written with Scott Knaster. What many folks don’t know is that Scott’s early Macintosh books in the mid to late 80’s were some of my main inspirations for becoming a professional programmer, and a Mac programmer in particular. I pretty much owe my career, and my current gig at Google, to Scott. I had a chance to meet him at a Big Nerd Ranch course a couple of years ago, discovered he’s a really great guy, and eventually we ended up collaborating on LoC (oh man was that fun). I figured out what we were covering and blazed the main trails, and he made it understandable and fun to read.

If you’re already slinging bits and swizzling IMPs then LoC will be too basic for you. Otherwise, check out the sample chapter and see if it speaks to you. If you’re truly coming up from scratch, you might want to start out with Dave Mark’s Learn C on the Macintosh (LoC is designed to pick up where LearnC leaves off, and Dave was the editor for LoC), and there’s also Stephen Kochan’s Programming in Objective-C, which Antonio also reviews. (I liked it, but I’m a pretty nerdy bookworm.)