(I considered putting this in Reviews, but the Mac geeks are here, so...)

I just got my copy of this book from Amazon last week and I have to say I'm extremely impressed. One of the things that drew me to OS X was the fact that Developer Tools are included with each boxed release.

However, while I enjoyed monkeying around with the command-line GNU tools I wasn't sure how to use the GUI tools to produce Cocoa or Carbon apps. I don't have a lot of experience with a GUI programming IDE (is that redundant?) so I mostly ignored them until I could get around to examining the tutorials and online documentation.


However, based on a very positive review on Slashdot (of all places), I found an excellent source of Cocoa/Objective C instruction. Each chapter takes you through a hands-on exercise creating an actual application with clear, straight-forward descriptions of what you're doing while you're doing it. The only pre-requisite is that you at least be familiar with C and basic OOP theory. If you know Java or C++, then so much the better.

The writing is clear and concise and you don't spend a lot of time talking about philosophy. The idea here is to start you out with a bit of hand-holding and then steadily up the complexity of the work until you're cranking out code on your own.

So far it's been a very good read. I've had a taste of Java and C++ but I'm pretty strong in C (ANSI, anyway) and taught an OO Design course last term so I'm fresh on the concepts.

The book mainly deals with Objective C code (which, as I understand it, is a mix of C and Smalltalk. However, I'm not familiar with Smalltalk so I can't confirm this.) However, in Chap. 25 (out of 27) the title is

"Using Java with Cocoa"

The first section of this chapter is entitled "Don't use Java to write Cocoa applications", so I'm assuming he's not wild about the idea.

The next section, however, is entitled "If You Must Use Jave to Write Cocoa Applications" and segues into how to do it.


I rate this an excellent buy (US$45, though Amazon has it cheaper and so may others) and well worth the time I'm spending on it. Hillegass approaches technical instruction in a style similar to mine, that is to get your hands dirty actually doing something and explain the theory as you go.

The one nit I have so far is that I wish it were spirally-bound so I could lay it out flat while I type in code and read. As it is, I've got a little gimmick I picked up at a bookstore that does something similar and is a god-send to folks like me who read and work at their computers at the same time. (But that's another review.)