Step into Xcode: Mac OS X Development
Written by: Fritz Anderson
Editorial Reviews:
If you like "Step into Xcode: Mac OS X Development, you might also like ...
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poor Introductory Reference
Comment: I'm most of the way through this book and have been losing interest since the first chapter. This book suffers from 3 fatal flaws: incomplete instruction, nonexistent trouble shooting, and poor code design. The first is very frustraiting, if you learn by doing and try to write the code in the book instead of just looking at the included code, you will quickly find your code does not work because the author omitted entire functions from the book. When learning to walk you will stumble, good intro books should account for that and provide you with the means to pull yourself up. This book provides no help to handle problems and you will make many, with the incomplete information along with the general disconnected nature of objective-C & cocoa you, like me may find yourself spending most of your time with this book debugging rather then learning. Finally as a veteran programmer in Win32, Linux, & embedded systems, I found the author's software design sensibilities to be lacking. Functions seem shoved in to classes for little reason, simple data objects took on complex IO functionality; these poor practices are touted by the author as examples of good Mac programming.
In summary I cannot recommend this book, its shortcomings make it difficult to work with, and these difficulties make it nearly impossible to learn from this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not a good introduction to anything.
Comment: I bought this book thinking that it might be a nice step by step tutorial for the Cocoa and XCode development platform. It turns out to be not much of an introduction to anything.
Maybe it is just a personality difference or a difference in my learning style versus the style of the book, but I really hated it. Right off the bat, I could not bring myself to care anything at all about the project for the book. I found the whole thing to be a big, confusing, dreadfully boring mess.
I can see that the book covers some interesting features of XCode. It is a shame that the book is not interesting at all for me. I could not sit and read it or get motivated to follow along. Of course, everyone is different. Maybe you will find it to be a real page turner for positive reasons.
Maybe down the road I will find that this book has some value as a reference. It is also possible that this is simply the worst book I've read so far on the subject, but I have to admit that it has a great cover!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lays a great foundation
Comment: This book covers a lot of ground - great for beginning Xcoders, especially CodeWarrior converts. Not quite as in-depth as I thought it would be, based on the description, but well worth the price.
Customer Rating:
Summary: solid IDE for Mac programmers
Comment: Macintosh programmers live in a restricted world; a ghetto, perhaps. The nice features of the Mac user interface and operating system also tend to make it hard to find good programming tools. Luckily, Apple has gone a long way to addressing this with the promulgation of Xcode.
Within Xcode, you can program in various languages, C, Java and, notably, Objective C. The latter is really mostly confined nowadays to a Mac. Anderson shows that the Xcode IDE does much of what you would expect a current IDE to do. Syntax colouring. Easy compiling and linking. Plus the ability to stuff things (binaries and data) into a package. As one chapter explains, this is crucial if you plan on letting others use your code. Putting it all into one package makes the distribution and maintenance far easier. Where you should remember that a Mac will have many packages, and not just yours.
I have to say, though, that I find Eclipse (for Java programmers) to be a richer environment for coding than Xcode. But Eclipse is really only for Java.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lots of useful info.
Comment: As to a recommendation, I'd say yes. Step into Xcode is most valuable to those getting started with Xcode, but even for people who have been using it for a little while you are sure to pick up a few tips and tricks.
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.4465
EAN: 9780321334220
ISBN: 0321334221
Label: Addison-Wesley Professional
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2006-02-09
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Studio: Addison-Wesley Professional
 | Format: Paperback List Price: $49.99 Our Price: $34.99 Your Save: $ 15.00 ( 30% ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Average Customer Rating:  |
Editorial Reviews:
If you like "Step into Xcode: Mac OS X Development, you might also like ...
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poor Introductory Reference
Comment: I'm most of the way through this book and have been losing interest since the first chapter. This book suffers from 3 fatal flaws: incomplete instruction, nonexistent trouble shooting, and poor code design. The first is very frustraiting, if you learn by doing and try to write the code in the book instead of just looking at the included code, you will quickly find your code does not work because the author omitted entire functions from the book. When learning to walk you will stumble, good intro books should account for that and provide you with the means to pull yourself up. This book provides no help to handle problems and you will make many, with the incomplete information along with the general disconnected nature of objective-C & cocoa you, like me may find yourself spending most of your time with this book debugging rather then learning. Finally as a veteran programmer in Win32, Linux, & embedded systems, I found the author's software design sensibilities to be lacking. Functions seem shoved in to classes for little reason, simple data objects took on complex IO functionality; these poor practices are touted by the author as examples of good Mac programming.
In summary I cannot recommend this book, its shortcomings make it difficult to work with, and these difficulties make it nearly impossible to learn from this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not a good introduction to anything.
Comment: I bought this book thinking that it might be a nice step by step tutorial for the Cocoa and XCode development platform. It turns out to be not much of an introduction to anything.
Maybe it is just a personality difference or a difference in my learning style versus the style of the book, but I really hated it. Right off the bat, I could not bring myself to care anything at all about the project for the book. I found the whole thing to be a big, confusing, dreadfully boring mess.
I can see that the book covers some interesting features of XCode. It is a shame that the book is not interesting at all for me. I could not sit and read it or get motivated to follow along. Of course, everyone is different. Maybe you will find it to be a real page turner for positive reasons.
Maybe down the road I will find that this book has some value as a reference. It is also possible that this is simply the worst book I've read so far on the subject, but I have to admit that it has a great cover!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lays a great foundation
Comment: This book covers a lot of ground - great for beginning Xcoders, especially CodeWarrior converts. Not quite as in-depth as I thought it would be, based on the description, but well worth the price.
Customer Rating:
Summary: solid IDE for Mac programmers
Comment: Macintosh programmers live in a restricted world; a ghetto, perhaps. The nice features of the Mac user interface and operating system also tend to make it hard to find good programming tools. Luckily, Apple has gone a long way to addressing this with the promulgation of Xcode.
Within Xcode, you can program in various languages, C, Java and, notably, Objective C. The latter is really mostly confined nowadays to a Mac. Anderson shows that the Xcode IDE does much of what you would expect a current IDE to do. Syntax colouring. Easy compiling and linking. Plus the ability to stuff things (binaries and data) into a package. As one chapter explains, this is crucial if you plan on letting others use your code. Putting it all into one package makes the distribution and maintenance far easier. Where you should remember that a Mac will have many packages, and not just yours.
I have to say, though, that I find Eclipse (for Java programmers) to be a richer environment for coding than Xcode. But Eclipse is really only for Java.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lots of useful info.
Comment: As to a recommendation, I'd say yes. Step into Xcode is most valuable to those getting started with Xcode, but even for people who have been using it for a little while you are sure to pick up a few tips and tricks.
Technical Details
Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 005.4465
EAN: 9780321334220
ISBN: 0321334221
Label: Addison-Wesley Professional
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2006-02-09
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Studio: Addison-Wesley Professional
