Great Price "iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide" Today
I move from software technologies almost yearly, starting with PHP to ASP.NET and now starting iPhone development, so each year is basically another library of books I have to buy to teach myself the language. I've read a ridiculous amount of computer books, ranging from the terrible (super boring, dense) to the insultingly easy ones (that basically treat you like a 4th grader learning programming.)
This, thankfully, is a fantastic mix of being incredibly easy to pick up and read, and also super informative. As far as iPhone development goes, this will be my 4th introductory book I've picked up, trying to get a handle on developing for the platform. The other books all typically tend to throw you into immediately coding, and never really actually explain why you're doing what you're doing, or make sense of any of it. Yes, this book does start off with an example chapter that you basically just copy word for word, but that's mostly to get your feet wet before actually digging through all the details and building your foundation.
In the first 3-4 chapters of this book, I already feel like I have a complete grasp on subjects that I did not yet understand from the 3 previous books I've read. I sort of had an idea why I typed '*' in front of names, or what @property (retain) statements meant, but I never fully understood what I was doing--it was mostly just "well, I read it, so it must be the way to do it." Basically, the other books got me about 75-80% there, but this one is 100%. The last 20 I feel is the most important, because that's when you finally begin to understand the concepts of the language, which let you move onto the more complex stuff with confidence.
Another reason I feel this makes a great coding book is the layout of each page. I can't tell you how important it is to present all that text + code in a meaningful, organized way. I've read some books where they just hit you over the head with instructions, with almost no visual clues and with fragmented code samples. But the pages in this book have plenty of white space per page, have plenty of illustrations and each code sample is commented (an appropriate amount) to give you hints as you're typing code as to what you're doing.
Finally, and thank goodness for this, the first example in this book that you write is NOT a Hello, World app :)
In summation, if you're like me and have started to read a few books (or maybe you haven't, I wish I could have started with this one) and are looking for a way to really feel confident with iPhone core concepts, then pick this book up and give it a read. I can't wait to get started on the many project ideas I have!
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Price : $39.99
iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide Overviews
Written by the trainers at the Big Nerd Ranch, the worldwide leader in professional training for Mac developers, this book provides a hands-on guide to learning how to program for the iPhone and iPod touch. Coverage includes
- An overview of Objective-C, the core language you’ll use to program for the iPhone
- An overview of the Xcode Tools
- How to work with the iPhone SDK’s UIKit framework and Cocoa Touch
- Build apps that use MapKit and CoreLocation, as well as the magnetometer
- Dive into animation and effects, using Core Animation and OpenGL ES
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Customer Review
This is now the definitive iPhone programming guide - TB-10 Pilot - Columbus, Ohio
This is going to become the new definitive guide for iPhone application development!
When I read the book I felt that I was actually talking to a real person explaining it to me.
The book is organized in a 'class in session' format where a concept is described, explained and then you are given a small project to type in, play with and modify. What is extremely surprising is that ALL the code works! I have yet to find a typo in any of the code examples. And better yet, the Kindle version displays all the graphics in full color if you use the MAC kindle reader! I bought both the paperback for a desk reference and the kindle version for fast access.
But the way the book is structured, if you follow the examples as you read, you will amass a huge amount of working and 'REUSABLE' code in your projects. And also, you will remember where and why you entered that code and where you can go back to get it. Another super plus is that almost every method, section and even line segment code are commented so you can see exactly what each snippet of code does.
For an old PL/1 and VB6 and .net person, all it took was just learning the Objective C syntax and apply that to the objective programming models I already know. Delegates = Callbacks, IB = Form Builder, etc. Once I figured that out it was very easy to understand what Joe and Aaron were saying. I already updated real-time some of my older apps with new functionality just by using the examples in this book.
If you are new iPhone programmer or want to know about how it work, go no farther. This is the book for you!
Misleading on OpenGL ES. - Marc R. Bublitz -
The book promises "Dive into animation and effects, using Core Animation and OpenGL ES" but there is no OpenGL ES in the book. The authors state that they wrote a chapter for it, then rewrote it, then rewrote it, then decided to leave it out and put the information into another book.
The rest of the book seems like it is well written and gets to the point without a lot of fluff, but seeing as I specifically ordered the book for the OpenGL ES information then had to go through a return process because I was mislead by the publishers I cannot rate this any higher than a three star.
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