Learning Cocoa Review | O'Reilly Media

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Book:		Learning Cocoa
Subject:		Learning Cocoa Review
Date:		2001-07-24 18:10:51
From:		E. Wang

Rating: As a newbie Cocoa developer with previous programming experience only in JavaScript and a little bit of Java, I found this book confusing at best. The book states that "if you're already familiar with an object-oriented programming language like Java or Smalltalk, you'll quickly feel right at home with Objective-C." However, what the book fails to mention is that it mixes plain C into it's example code at times w/o informing the reader. For example, in the DotView example in Chapter 8, it makes use of C structs w/o even bothering to explain them. I found this very confusing. In addition, the first release of this book is plagued with errors. I have submitted several already, but there are a few whose solutions elude me. As a previous reviewer mentioned, the To Do example application doesn't work properly and has numerous bugs in it. This book really seems like more of a primer for experienced NeXTStep developers who want to get up to speed with Cocoa in OS X, rather than the newbie Cocoa developer. I only hope O'Reilly can come out with a much improved second edition of the book or perhaps "Cocoa: The Definitive Guide."