I made the switch to Apple computers nearly four years ago when I used part of a scholarship to by an iBook for use at work. Like pretty much everyone else I knew, the idea of a UNIX-based system that Just Works and does the Right Thing was intriguing. The first thing I did when I got it home was connect it to power, and the second was install the developer tools. Since that time I have done almost nothing to forward my goal of developing software for the Mac platform. This is changing…
Earlier this year I bought [Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (2nd ed.)] only to find that the [third edition] was expected out in a few months. Pre-ordering it on Amazon, I put off taking up the Mac development gauntlet until I had a single coherent resource which covers the new APIs like CoreData and CoreAnimation. Soon, I had the book in my hot little hands but still I put off beginning my path on the road to Cocoa–developer-dom. Then, my application for the iPhone developer programme was accepted and I paid the $US99. I don’t mind paying for books and not reading reading them – I like to look at owning a book as being, if not a substitute, at least a placebo for reading it – but if I’m paying for a programme membership, by Invisible Spaghetti Monster I’m going to use it. Spurred by my resurgent yearning for a semblance of legitimacy as a past student of CS and my sense of fiscally-inspired entitlement both, I downloaded the SDK, picked up the book, put my head down, and started learning. This blog a record of my process of learning Objective-C and Cocoa development, along with my other interests.