5 Responses for "Programming in Objective-C 2.0"

1. Andrea Leganza March 7th, 2010 at 6:04 am 1

   Nice book, i missed on it a deeper explanation of all the feature inside the language, instead of adding chapters about iphone developing.
   Rating: 3 / 5

2. CAW March 7th, 2010 at 6:45 am 2

   The book is okay. For a beginning programmer s/he will get some basic knowledge that is a good start, for someone who is familiar with C and/or C++ already – disappointment awaits. I was troubled in the preface when I was told that this book was written from the viewpoint of someone who hasn’t used C before. That meant I spent a lot of time skimming information about basic C that had been inherited by Objective-C. But that is not what disappoints me.

   Some of the definitions of basic C are incomplete or misleading, which makes me wonder about the Objective-C stuff. I am only on page 219 now, but still I wonder why its better for me to [[classname alloc] init] rather than [classname new]. The comment about being aware that allocation and initialization are two separate events doesn’t really seem too cool to me. If I learn that, can I save myself some typing by just using new? Or is there something that doesn’t happen. Btw, volatile is nots sort of the inverse of const. Please.

   Apart from that I do feel like I haven’t wasted my money, I now know enough to start experimenting and learning on my own, but I could have done that using Wiki and saved myself some ca$h.

   To be fair, I am an experienced programmer (I write C/C++ compilers for a living and wanted to learn something ‘new’). But I feel that even beginners need a little more in-depth explanation as to why the author prefers one approach over another, not just the how.
   Rating: 2 / 5

3. BookReader March 7th, 2010 at 8:46 am 3

   Book arrived promptly, was in great condition. (Small bend on two corners appears from shipping. Softcover. ) Would use vendor again.
   Rating: 4 / 5

4. Redrocks Coder March 7th, 2010 at 9:29 am 4

   The book is just O. K. but given the scarce supply of books on Objective-C it’s probably one of the best available. Unfortunately however I also paid for the LiveLessons video training for this book (Available at SafariBooksOnline or soon on DVD) and they are nearly useless. See my comments below:

   Programming in Objective-C 2. 0 LiveLessons Review:

   I’ve developed windows software for about 15 years and had a brief interlude with Objective-C (2-3 months) back in 2008. I needed a refresher for the basics I still partially remembered and training for the more intricate/complicated features of the language which I never learned. I paid for access to these videos on Safari Books Online and spent several hours going through the videos.

   I can say without question that I have no idea who the author was targeting with this material. The videos take an enormous amount of time to demonstrate the simplest features of the language while never covering a great deal of important information for any given topic. Important details about the language feature being taught are often omitted, delayed to some later point, or explained poorly.

   You’re forced to watch as the author types out every line of code he intends to use for his examples. All of it very similar to what you watched him type 1, 2, or 10 minutes earlier. All of the code should have been pre-typed so that the author could have covered material in greater detail and in a more student friendly organized fashion. Every video could (and should) be condensed to 1/10th the current length to cover the same material.

   If you’re new to programming this material is nowhere near sufficient to learn the language or how to use it. If you’re an experienced programmer but new to Objective-C this course is nearly useless. You’ll learn more spending 1 hour skimming his book (or another Objective-C text).

   Wish I could say something good but they just plain suck. Disappointing. I spent hours online looking for video training on Objective-C and only found this course and some videos from Pragmatic Bookshelf (they suck also) and I bought both. Would not recommend either.

   Hope this saves someone some money and alot of wasted time.
   Rating: 3 / 5

5. G. Norton March 7th, 2010 at 11:55 am 5

   I spent an evening looking through the book and returned it. I have 20 years of C experience, and having already worked through the Hillegass book’s exercises, I didn’t find much additional material here to justify $30.
   Rating: 3 / 5