Carol Fisher's Homepage
Transitioning into iPod Touch App Development
In January 2008, I decided to transition into iPod Touch app development.
On my journey, I have come across many wonderful learning resources.
What I offer in this document is the optimal order that I would have used these resources, were I to
start this journey again.
If you have a background similar to mine,
then my hope is that the outline below
might help you to learn about iPhone Development in an efficient and thorough manner.
Here's a bit about me, prior to my decision to make this transition:
- doctorate in mathematics
- over 25 years of math teaching experience, both at the
college and high school levels
- knowledge and experience with a variety of procedural programming languages
and computing tools, all
self-taught:
HTML, JavaScript, PERL, MathML, MatLab, Mathematica, TeX, Fortran, Basic, etc.
- no object-oriented programming experience
- a PC user, with only a smidegeon of MAC experience
- good self-learner; I like to learn from well-written books
So, here's the order I would do things, were I to do this all over again:
- book: Switching to the Mac, Leopard Edition, "The Missing Manual" series,
by David Pogue, O'Reilly, 2008
-- This helped me make the transition from a PC to a MAC (I bought a MacBook Pro). SUPERB book!
- book: iPod, The Missing Manual, by J.D. Biersdorfer, with David Pogue, O'Reilly, 2009
-- This helped to familiarize me with my new iPod.
- free lectures: Introduction to Computer Science: Programming Methodology, by Mehran Sahami,
through the "Stanford Engineering Everywhere" program
CS106A Online Course
-- Having never had any "formal" computer science training, this semester-long course
(twenty-eight 50-minute lectures) was invaluable to me.
The instructor is engaging, funny, and has a deep
knowledge of the subject matter.
I "took notes" as I watched each downloaded movie, rewinding
and repeating as needed.
- book: Learn C on the Mac, A Complete Course in C Programming for the Beginner, by Dave Mark, APress, 2009
Great introduction to C.
-- He talks you through the process of getting XCode (Apple's integrated development environment)
so you can use it throughout the book.
- book: Learn Objective-C on the Mac, Everything You Need to Know to Become an Objective-C Guru,
by Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knaster, APress, 2009
-- This book is designed as a sequel to the prior book.
-- "Chapter 7: More About XCode" is superb. Finally, I started appreciating
all the functionality that XCode provides!
- book: Programming in Objective-C 2.0, 2nd Edition, Developer's Library, by Stephen G. Kochan, 2009
-- This book could be used in place of, or in addition to, the previous book.
- Object-Oriented
Programming with Objective-C, iPhone Reference Library, online tutorial
-- Apple's own documentation.
-
Introduction to the Objective-C 2.0 Programming Language, iPhone Reference Library, online tutorial
-- Apple's own documentation.
- book: Beginning iPhone 3 Development, Exploring the iPhone SDK,
A complete course in iPhone and iPod touch programming,
by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche, APress, 2009
-- This continues the APress series.
- free lectures:
iPhone Application Programming, offered by
Stanford University
-- taught by two people from Apple
