Way to Learn Computer

All i can say is wow!! This book took a very long time to come out, but it was well worth the wait. Coming in i had experience developing a few apps for the iPhone, but i ended up getting a lot out of this book, even on concepts i already had used previously. Not once did i get bored or frustrated when reading this book, and in fact i ended up going to bed much later than i should have because i got so caught up with a specific chapter. Would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in iPhone development.
Rating: 5 / 5

I found some of the wording in this book confusing. It’s not possible to attribute the problems to one author or another, but in general I had to re-read sections over and over to try to understand what the authors wanted to explain. I also think this book does a poor job of illuminating Interface Builder. I found many sections that attempted to explain how to make connections confusing; pictures would have been a better medium for explaining how the connections are made.

The book uses the “dot syntax” for the code samples, which is one of those hot button issues in the Objective-C/Cocoa community. I personally don’t like it. I am very new to the language but as far as I can see it adds very little. The fact that the examples use it extensively (but not exclusively) makes it tricky to convert back to the normal syntax. In one of the code examples I noticed that in the header a variable was declared but in the implementation it was actually a method, which I think is probably improper.

In some sections the code samples skip ahead or doesn’t clearly explain that code has been added; you end up having to assume that it’s in the downloaded code. Also, there is inconsistent use of the markup in the sample code in the book. By this I mean that in some sections new code is highlighted and clearly noted as new, in others there is no such markup. Another common practice in this book is to make reference to code that you will be writing in a future section (sometimes noted “as yet written”) which I find odd. I prefer to build up to something, not down to it. This is especially confusing if you are editing your code (following along, so to speak) and building the application as you go, since this will cause compilation errors.

In fairness though, the code samples I downloaded all worked when opened and run from XCode which is a plus if you want to stare and compare. It would be nice if the sample code was free of the START/END comments though, that is visually confusing.

As a beginner in Objective-C (but with 12 years of Java experience) who wants to learn iPhone development, I would not recommend this book. For me the style of these authors was incompatible with my way of thinking; I also did not like the heavy use of dot syntax in what appears to be an attempt to make the code “smaller” when for a beginner in the language it would be better to show more. In fairness, I think the authors make it plain that they do not intend to spend time on syntax. Perhaps this book is more useful if you have more background in Objective-C. In general I think this book rushes to get to the UI in an attempt to make developing an app seem easier than in reality it is.
Rating: 2 / 5