This is a post in my series “Road to Xcode.” I am currently reading Become An Xcoder by Bert Altenburg, Alex Clarke and Philippe Mougin.

08: A Program With a GUI

I compiled my first example application with a GUI, which consisted of tracking down a self inflicted bug. It is expected for me to typo. I should really work on my typing skills as I go along my Xcoding journey.

This chapter was a bit overwhelming with the introduction of classes, objects, and methods. Being new to programming and Objective C/Cocoa is that these concepts are completely foreign to me. I think Ia m getting a grasp of classes and objects, methods is still a little distant. But thankfully the next chapter covers them a little more.

The further I go the more I want to continue on. I think the progression might be a little slower as I deal with more complicated concepts that relate to real world examples (instead of the simple little box I made above).

This is a post in my series “Road to Xcode.” I am currently reading Become An Xcoder by Bert Altenburg, Alex Clarke and Philippe Mougin.

04: Printing on screen

This chapter mainly introduced me to NSLog() and using it to display results even though its main function is to display error messages. The basic idea was mainly for formatting output in a readable way by adding padding to a column of data in integer form or the use of escaping to add special characters like \n for starting a new line.

I have to remind myself that the chapter mainly talked about how to format data being outputted by the NSLog() and not actually dealing with Objective C just yet.

Well, i now theoretically know the process to printing data to the screen and next up is opening up Xcode and compiling the example program the book has been working through so far to introduce me to the basics of declaring a function, defining variables, using operators, and importing header files (I almost sound like I know what I am talking about).

This is a post in my series “Road to Xcode.” I will be embarking on a journey to learn Objective C and Cocoa programming for Mac OS X. This will not be an instructive series but rather a look at what I have learned as well as the resources I am using to gain ground in the wide world of software development. You can follow my progress or check out other posts in this series by heading over to the Road to Xcode tag page.

Introduction

To kick start my Xcoding journey I am reading Become An Xcoder by Bert Altenburg, Alex Clarke and Philippe Mougin. This book is aimed at people with absolutely no coding experience and is free to download in PDF form.

01: A program is a series of instructions

The introduction and first chapter to Become an Xcoder is rather simple. I was introduced to basic programming terminology like data types, integers, operators, etc. Nothing I was too unfamiliar with since I read through basic introductions to PHP which uses the same terminology (I suppose all languages do). Working through the chapter was pretty straight forward except for the introduction to the ++ operator. I don’t know what it is, but I always seem to get hung up on this thing’s function. I understand what it does (a variable will be itself incremented by 1 i.e. x = x + 1). I was having a hard time with the outcome of the variable depending on the order the operator was used, such as x++ versus ++x. The examples written in the book were not extremely helpful, but then again I am only on the first chapter and I am hoping better explanation of the ++ operator will be later on.

As with any introduction I was not compiling any code or even looking at the IDE, but I am eager to continue.