Working on small web applications: PHP (or possible Biferno). Trying to create a workflow to tie a number of different programs tother: take you pick from AppleScript, shell scripts, VisualBasic, or Tcl. Working on large enterprise apps that have to have a hundred different interfaces: Java is the way to go. Doing real-time or time sensitive work (first person shooters): C is your friend, C++ is your cousin. Mostly doing statistical or other numeric/scientific work: learn fortan (otherwise stay away at all costs). What do you want to do? If you are mostly trying to create reports, or otherwise munging text files, the learn perl. In your opinion, what is the strongest most versital language to learn? if you have time, why i'd want to use one language over the other aside from JAVA. Learn it in a language you are familiar with, and then if you decide to move to Obj-C (or just learn it on the side) then you will have Cocoa under your belt and can concentrate on what makes Obj-C Obj-C. Cocoa is a big umbrella with a lot of classes, methods, interfaces, and best practices to get used to.
MAC OS GUI INTERFACES COCOA CODE
If you already know Java, continue to use Java (unless you are creating First Person Shooters, then you need direct access to pointers, and most of your code is going to be in C with C++ or Obj-C wrappers around it). What they are really pushing is the Cocoa frameworks, and the accessors in Java and Obj-C are as identical as they can be given the differences in the languages. Those tow languages seem to have equal support from Apple. one way of bring in code from other platforms. The two primary languages for Cocoa programing are Java and Obj-C (Obj-C is really a way of accessing existing C++ engines from existing projects. PBG4 Dude: Apple has said that they encourage new applications to use Cocoa (as opposed to Carbon, or implicitly Swing, etc.), but they have made no recommendations on the language to be used. As you do, write down your ideas for programs and try to build those as well. Then grab Aaron Hillegass' book or any of the other books mentioned in this thread (heck, even Cocoa for Dummies is a good book) and work through that. I'd say to do the sample currency converter app in the Cocoa Tutorial to start with. Not to say I make great looking GUIs, one look at my program will show you that \ but putting my GUI together was a virtual snap. Still after doing this for a couple of days straight (thanks to Eric Tremblay's Cocoa programming class ) it's almost become 2nd nature. Interface Builder took me some time to get used to, just because the steps for subclassing / instantiating objects, creating actions / outlets, generating files, and writing files back to the XCode project aren't always intuitive. You can wire up GUI actions like wiring a button to display a window with no code whatsoever. It's kinda like VB if you've played with that at all, except more powerful. I just love being able to build my GUI through drag -n- drop. If it weren't for IB, I'd still be developing in Java. If you have a solid understanding of OO concepts and Java/C programming you shouldn't have a difficult time moving to Obj-C. I've spent the last few years in school learning Java and C, and Objective-C takes these two great tastes and mixes them together. Yea, I must say I dig programming in Cocoa for OS X. Good luck! Speaking for myself, Cocoa programming is fun. Look in the help for NSDocument, for example. If you poke around a bit in the online help, you'll find tutorials for building applications. The last volume is written by an Apple employee. They're all solid tomes from veteran developers. None of these are of the LEARN COCOA IN 30 DAYS OMG!!! class of tutorial. Building Cocoa Applications: A Step by Step Guide.There are lots of good books on OS X programming. Once you "get" Cocoa, it's pretty easy to use. Personally, I find Cocoa much easier to handle than Java's elephantine and occasionally convoluted libraries (not to even mention the psychological scars I got learning VMS' C API). You have to spend a certain amount of time getting used to the way it approaches things, and the naming conventions, and so forth - the same as you would for any large API. It adds very little syntax to C, but the little bit it adds is incredibly powerful in actual use.Ĭocoa, like any API its size, has a pretty steep learning curve. If you're comfortable with both C and object-oriented development, Objective-C itself is pretty simple. Thanks, i installed the xcode but it looked intimidating i haven't stepped too deep yet, busy studying for college test on wed.