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Step By Stepというだけあって、操作方法が順を追って箇条書きされていたので、書いてあるとおりに作業を進めていくことで、アプリケーション作成の流れを一通り知ることができた。項目の数の割には図が少なく、文字による説明が多いのがやや難点だが、各項目の横にはその操作に実際に使用する開発ツール上のアイコンやタブ、ボタンなどが小さなマークとして記されていたので、操作に迷うことはあまりなかった。
内容的には、テキストやグラフィックス、ファイル操作、印刷といった一般的な事柄のほか、MathPaperの数式解析ルーチンの作成部分では、lexとyaccを利用しており、簡単ではあるが使い方が解説されていた点が興味深かった。
Good things:
(1) It is pretty well thought-out.
(2) The progression through 4 projects is good.
(3) There is working code for the examples available online.
Bad things:
(1) The book is riddled with errors. If you include the unofficial errata from OReilly's Website, the book becomes about 200% more usable.
(2) Why has this book not been reprinted? At LEAST OReilly should have released an official errata for this book at this point!!!
(3) This book does NOT cover 10.3 and the XCode software (still uses project builder). In most cases this is ok and you can figure much of it out. However, there are times that the differences are too significant to overcome without a lot of effort.
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I have been very happy with O'Reilly books in the past, but this one is substandard.
I would recommend trying a different book unless this one is overhauled.
I started tinkering with Mac OS X a few years ago by reading a hodge-podge of incomplete Apple docs, sites like Stepwise, and archives of Omni-Group lists. These sources are great for reference, but it can be difficult to get answers you need unless you already have enough experience to know what questions to ask. Tough luck, newbie. O'Reilly's "Learning Cocoa" felt like an extension of Apple's docs - minimal on concepts and not entirely clear on some of the objectives of the examples. It's difficult to get an bigger-picture view of some of the capabilities offered by Cocoa and how you _could_ be doing development without a good explanation of concepts, clearly written example exercises that follow a sequence of topics, and additional information on how to make the best use of the Apple-provided developer tools.
The authors of both books take great pains to explain concepts to you in basic terms and then reinforce them with very well designed examples that really make you think. They then approach component problems from varying angles in order to help you understand the different options you have for tackling them. The chapter summaries and additional follow-up exercises were a very nice touch. Best of all is the idea that these books are not teaching you how to use particular classes in a restricted situation - they're teaching you how to understand _solutions_ in terms of Cocoa and then equip you with the skills required to plan your entire development approach and execute your project. The pointers on where to find additional documentation and some very, very cool tricks on how to use the development environment really made these books worthwhile.
I now feel more comfortable with Cocoa and more confident in my abilities to program on Mac OS X. Thanks, guys. :)
Obviously, it would be nice for me if the book explored network programming or the IOKit, but it concentrated on the fundamentals which nearly all applications share: windows, menus, drawing, printing, preferences, clipboards, documents, icons, etc. I can figure it out from here.
So get off the fence, it's time to learn Cocoa.
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