by Bob McCune on March 13, 2008
Over the past few months I’ve been spending a lot my free time learning Objective-C and Cocoa. Although it’s been fun learning a new language and framework, it has been somewhat of an uphill climb. Objective-C was the easy part. If you have some familiarity with C and also some experience with an OO language like Java, C#, or C++, you’ll pick it up within a week or two. Cocoa, on the other hand, can take quite a bit more time to wrap your head around. It’s a very large and robust framework and understanding how to use its constituent parts to form a whole requires a fairly significant investment of time and effort.
One of the biggest challenges to learning Cocoa is the lack of up-to-date books. There are several on the market, but most are woefully outdated. The language, development tools, and available frameworks and APIs have changed considerably since these books were written which can present an obstacle to learning from these older references. Thankfully, there are some new and updated titles coming out this year from Aaron Hillegass
, Bill Dudney, and Erik Buck. I’ve got ‘em all on pre-order!
Although the book market may be a bit lacking at the moment that doesn’t mean there aren’t useful resources to be found. In fact, you’ll find quite the opposite is true. Apple’s Developer Connection posts many references, guides, and sample code at its site. There are also a number of useful third-party resources I visit regularly including MacDevNet, CocoaDev, CocoaBuilder, and Scott Stevenson’s excellent Cocoa Dev Central. Additionally, you’ll find dozens of great blogs and articles in various places. One of my new favorite Mac dev blogs is Marcus S. Zarra’s and Matt Long’s Cocoa Is My Girlfriend. The content is great and the name is brilliant!
The problem isn’t that there’s not enough information to be found. The problem is how do you make sense of it all and more importantly, how do you use this information to build a real application?
To help in this regard I’m starting a new site called Operation: Cocoa. Its purpose will be to provide the aspiring Cocoa developer with a path through the maze. Although it will likely be a few months before the site is up and running, I’m already working on content and will be hosting it on this site in the interim. The first tutorial entitled “Hello Cocoa” will be posted in the next week or two.
I’m very interested to hear any comments or opinions you have about this idea: what you think about the site name, what kind of content would you like to see, etc.
Thanks,
-Bob
by Bob McCune on February 3, 2008
For the past few months I’ve been spending a considerable amount of my free time learning Objective-C and Cocoa. Apple’s Leopard release has introduced so many new and interesting developer technologies that I decided it was finally time to dive in and learn to write code for my favorite platform.
One of the new Leopard APIs I’ve been excited to learn is called Core Animation (CA). CA is a new Cocoa framework providing you the ability to create UIs with rich animations and compositions by using with a simple, consistent programming model. This allows you to easily create visual effects for your applications that would be impractical, if not downright impossible, to do on other platforms.
One of the challenges to learning CA (especially given my n00b status) is the lack of books and tutorials on the topic. So, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from the Pragmatic Programmer guys introducing Bill Dudney’s new book Core Animation for OS X. It provides in-depth coverage of all the key concepts including animations, filtering, layering, and 3D effects. I’ve just started reading it, but it looks great so far. I’ll be sure to write a full review when I complete it.
The book is currently available in “beta” PDF form with the final print version available in July. You can find out more about the book and get your own copy at its website.
by Bob McCune on January 21, 2008
I’d like to say thanks to everyone who attended my Spring 2.5 presentation at last week’s TCJUG meeting. We had another good turnout, which is always nice to see. Jeff Jensen at Intertech is always a great host and I had a fun time presenting. I hope the info was useful to you. I’ve attached copies of the presentation and sample code for your reference.
Thanks again!
-Bob
by Bob McCune on March 23, 2007
I’d like to say thanks to everyone who attended my JPA presentation at last night’s TCJUG meeting. It was a full house and there was a lot of good conversation during and after the presentation. As always, Jeff Jensen at Intertech is a great host and I had a fun time. I hope the info was useful to you. I’ll post the slides and demo application as soon as I finish making some Maven tweaks. Look for it early next week.
Thanks again!
-Bob
by Bob McCune on December 9, 2006
I was recently compiling a list of Test-driven Development (TDD) “Best Practices” for my client project’s wiki site and thought this would probably be useful to the community at large. I’ve been an avid practitioner and proponent of test-driven development for a few years now and have found it to be one of the most important practices I’ve adopted. If practiced correctly, it will have a significantly positive impact on the design and quality of your code.
[click to continue…]
by Bob McCune on November 22, 2006
I recently came across a new Eclipse plugin you should definitely check out if you’re doing test-driven development (TDD). It’s called EclEmma and is based on Emma, the open source code coverage tool. Code coverage reporting tools like Emma or Cobertura are a must if you are doing TDD, but the one downside these tools have is it’s not easy to run them against an individual class while you’re writing your test. EclEmma solves this problem by nicely integrating with Eclipse which makes getting coverage feedback as easy as firing up the IDE’s JUnit test runner. It’s still an early release, so you may find some rough edges here and there, however, I’ve been quite impressed with what I’ve seen so far. It definitely looks promising.
EclEmma Homepage
by Bob McCune on November 11, 2006
I just finished giving a presentation on Hibernate 3.2 at the first Twin Cities Code Camp event in Edina, MN. You can grab a copy of the presentation and source code examples below.
As I was attempting to get set up I realized I had forgotten to bring my DVI to VGA adapter for my MacBook Pro. Once I recovered from the mini stroke I was having, I asked one of the organizers if they could help me track down someone with a Mac laptop. Thankfully they did and things were able to move forward. I don’t know the anonymous Mac user whose adapter I borrowed, but thank you very much!!
I’d like to say thanks to everyone who attended. I hope you found the presentation useful.
Hibernate Presentation
by Bob McCune on November 11, 2006
The long awaited update to Hibernate in Action has been released! HiA was the definitive guide on all things Hibernate, but unfortunately was written for version 2.x. The new version has been updated for version 3.x and additionally covers using Hibernate as the persistence provider for JPA and EJB3. I’ve been reading the preview release of this book for the past few weeks and am enjoying the updated and new content. It’s a must have book if you’re working with Hibernate.
The eBook is available now and the print version will be available in a couple of weeks. You can get a copy from Manning’s website. You can also pre-order the book from Amazon.
