The best way to learn a language is total immersion, same goes for computer languages.
This weekend I did a total plunge. I’ve already accepted the fact that I need to learn Objective-C and Cocoa to build real iPhone apps that will stand the test of time (and Apple).
I poured over several resources.
The Pragmatic Bookshelf
The Pragmatic Programmers has a bunch of programming resources, from books to screencasts and even training seminars.
I decided I couldn’t afford their $2,200 training in Chicago so I opted for one of their screencasts called “Writing Your First iPhone Application“. This sounded like what I needed, but when I started getting into it a couple of things became clear. First, the screencast was a bit over my head. It was assuming I had more knowledge of Objective-C than I did.
iPhone SDK
Secondly, I hit a snag when I started coding because I was using the latest version of the iPhone SDK and a lot of things had depreciated. I wasn’t smart enough to know how to sidestep this, so I had to give up.
I noticed they also had a screencast called “Coding in Objective-C“. It had been a while since I started reading my Objective-C for Dummies book, and I thought a video series might be a refreshing way to get back up to speed. Again, it was very thick and I was feeling like I was still at the “dummy” level and needed to go pick up my book again. I pressed on though, working at the library until it closed at 5pm.
Lynda.com
When I got home I had dinner and started looking for yet another video resource since the one from this morning really did a number on my brain. I knew about some video training at Lynda.com and after looking closer I decided it was worth $30 to have access to the iPhone SDK Essential Training. I REALLY liked the way this guy teaches, much more my style. He actually took a lot of time to explain the concepts behind the code, which is what I needed. But one thing I realized while I was watching, is that he was saying the exact same things as the Pragmatic Programmers tutorial, just in a different way. The Pragmatic videos were more in depth and if I hadn’t watched those first I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the Lynda videos as much.
I wen through chapters 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 of the videos that night. It was really helpful to have the reinforcement and repetition of content across multiple voices in one day.
My Church - Pathway Church, Wyoming, MI
The next day I got up and went to church with my wonderful family. Afterward I went to B&N again to look for more resources (which is much more limited than Amazon unfortunately). I felt like I was ready to get back into the nitty gritty, and books seem the best way to do that. So I took a break on the video training and picked up 3 books that day:
iPhone Head First - A Good Read!
I was most drawn to the Head First iPhone Development book because the content was presented much more lightly. There was a lot of white space and pictures on each page which felt comforting.
Turns out I REALLY enjoyed going through the Head First book. It got me into Xcode right away, building mini-apps until I was at page 154 and feeling really good about the progress I made that day. Let me say though, as much as I liked this book, I would still not recommend it for the absolute programming newbie. If I would have started with this book I probably would have hated it, but because I was already immersed it felt just right.
At this time in the journey I’m dead serious about making an iPhone app. I start thinking about how far I’ve already come and believing I might actually make it to the app store someday. It’s been interesting so far, maybe I should start a blog about this stuff, what do you think?
