Why?

I’ve had these couple of application in my head over the last few months that I particularly could really use. My feeling often times is if it’s something I can benefit from it, so can others.

Since I don’t believe there is a solution to my problem in existence (or at least exactly like I am needing), I thought it would be fun to develop this myself. After all, I program websites, I design web interfaces and I have a passion for good looking, esthetically pleasing interfaces. But I don’t know how to program on the Mac.

What do I need?

I’m always trying to keep up with tech trends from the many blogs I read, tech sites and other resources. Sometimes I just am curious about what it is, other times its something I could use. If it’s something that stays with me, I often turn to books as one of the better ways for me to gain a real foundation on a certain topic. So I grabbed some books on programming for OSX which was actually a little confusing.

I had no clue on what programming on OSX was about, and the many subjects on it made it a bit more puzzling and mysterious. There were book titles about Objective-C, Cocoa, Programming C on the Mac, XCode and general programming for OS X. Most of these I knew of but since I never actually used or programmed with them, they were just fuzzy clouds labeled with tech jargon.




I ended up picking up three books, Beginning Mac OS X Programming from Wrox, Cocoa Programming for OS X from Addison-Wesley, Beginning iPhone Development from Apress.

The idea was originally an iPhone app which after thinking it through some more, it could clearly work on both the desktop and mobile platform. Ultimately I thought it would be a better idea (and cheaper) to learn the desktop environment first.

I started reading Beginning Programming... which seemed to cover a lot of the essentials like learning XCode, Interface Builder, C and Objective C plus the many tutorials using the tools. I’m through the initials sections covering XCode and Interface Builder and now reading about the C language. So far the book is a decent read, not too much personality but it’s walking me through each tool and showing me around them clearly explaining each task as I go which is appreciated.

While I’ve just begun to dabble in OS X programming, I’ve already begun to visualize how to build my application. I’ll be posting my journey through this learning experience and when the time is right, hopefully reveal a well thought out, usable application.

Tags: software