Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition)

THE #1 BESTSELLING BOOK ON OBJECTIVE-C 2.0

Programming in Objective-C 2.0 provides the new programmer a complete, step-by-step introduction to Objective-C, the primary language used to develop applications for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS X platforms.

The book does not assume previous experience with either C or object-oriented programming languages, and it includes many detailed, practical examples of how to put Objective-C to use in your everyday iPhone/iPad or Mac OS X programming tasks.

A powerful yet simple object-oriented programming language that’s based on the C programming language, Objective-C is widely available not only on OS X and the iPhone/iPad platform but across many operating systems that support the gcc compiler, including Linux, Unix, and Windows systems.

The second edition of this book thoroughly covers the latest version of the language, Objective-C 2.0. And it shows not only how to take advantage of the Foundation framework’s rich built-in library of classes but also how to use the iPhone SDK to develop programs designed for the iPhone/iPad platform.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

Part I: The Objective-C 2.0 Language

2 Programming in Objective-C

3 Classes, Objects, and Methods

4 Data Types and Expressions

5 Program Looping

6 Making Decisions

7 More on Classes

8 Inheritance

9 Polymorphism, Dynamic Typing, and Dynamic Binding

10 More on Variables and Data Types

11 Categories and Protocols

12 The Preprocessor

13 Underlying C Language Features

Part II: The Foundation Framework

14 Introduction to the Foundation Framework

15 Numbers, Strings, and Collections

16 Working with Files

17 Memory Management

18 Copying Objects

19 Archiving

Part III: Cocoa and the iPhone SDK

20 Introduction to Cocoa

21 Writing iPhone Applications

Part IV: Appendixes

A Glossary

B Objective-C 2.0 Language Summary

C Address Book Source Code

D Resources

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding Beginner's Guide to Objective-C

By E. Kim - January 3, 2009

This book is both comprehensive and easy to understand. The sequence of chapters chosen to be read chronologically is well thought out (e.g. having the reader use static data types before introducing the generic id type, or having the reader declare and implement accessor methods before introducing the property and synthesize directives). The end of chapter exercises are also short (i.e. quick to complete) but also thoughtfully designed.

The author chose to make this book serve not only as a reference, but as a tutorial. In other words, a bit like the "... for Dummies" series in its hand-holding (i.e. tutorial) style. However, this book is certainly not for "dummies" as the author does not assume the reader to be slow or requiring interjections of humor or casualness. Other books will have authors write things like "Now grab a slice of pizza before we hit this really hard subject!", but this author thankfully spares the reader of this. Kochan is concise and direct... read more

Fantastic book organization!

By John McSwain "Compound J" - January 11, 2009

I am a web designer and developer and I've programmed in a lot of languages (i.e. HTML, javascript, actionscript, visual basic, etc.). I wanted to learn Objective-C as the quickly as I could. I quickly found out that not having experience in programming in C (the predecessor to Objective-C) made it hard to understand the reasoning behind the code syntax and finding resources that didn't assume I knew C was almost impossible...

After going through the first three chapters of this book in less than an hour, my confidence in the language has increased exponentially. The book is roughly 624 pages, but I feel like I could code the samples and finish the book in just a few days...

The book is organized into four main sections:
I: The Objective-C 2.0 Language
II: The Foundation Framework
III: Cocoa and the iPhone SDK
IV: Appendixes

The separation of these main topics, Objective-C Language features and the Foundation Framework for example,... read more

Best book to learn Objective-C 2.0

By Kelsey McClanahan - January 24, 2009

Note: Typos have been fixed since the edition I originally purchased. I've kept my original review below, which was influenced by the number of typos and formatting glitches I encountered in the original edition. Now that it's all been rectified, there is NO BETTER BOOK for learning Objective-C 2.0 than this book.

*** ORIGINAL REVIEW (noted deficiencies corrected in updated revisions) ***

I'd love to recommend this book as the gateway to learning to program Mac OS X applications, but unfortunately I cannot. It contains more than a few typographical errors, especially in the first few chapters. Those new to programming in C may end up confused and unable to understand why their programs will not compile. This is unacceptable for this type of book.

Beyond typos, my second gripe is the lack of exercise solutions. This book provides challenging exercises at the end of each chapter that are designed to hone your skills and solidify your understanding... read more