Aaron Hillegass - Cocoa Programming for OS X. The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

This book covers the major design patterns of Cocoa and includes an introduction to the Swift language. It will also get you started with the most commonly-used developer tools: Xcode and Instruments . After reading this book, you will understand these major design patterns which will enable you to understand and use Apples documentation a critical part of any Cocoa developers toolkit as well as build your own Cocoa applications from scratch.

This book teaches ideas and provides hands-on exercises that show these ideas in action. Each chapter will guide you through the process of building or adding features to an application.

Often, we will ask you to do something and explain the details or theory afterward. If you are confused, read a little more. Usually, the help you seek will be only a paragraph or two away.

Because of the hands-on nature of the book, it is essential that you do the exercises and not just read the words. Doing the exercises will help build the kind of solid understanding that will enable you to develop on your own when you are finished with this book. You will also learn a great deal from making mistakes, reading error messages, and figuring out what went wrong practical experience you cant get from reading alone. At first, you may want to stick with what we show you, but later in the book when you are more comfortable with the environment, you should feel free to experiment with the exercises and add your own ideas.

Most chapters end with one or two challenge exercises. These exercises are important to do as well. Taking on these challenges gives you the opportunity to test your skills and problem-solve on your own.

You can get help with this book at bignerdranch.com/books , where you will find errata and downloadable solutions for the exercises. You can also post questions and find relevant conversations on the Big Nerd Ranch forums at forums.bignerdranch.com .

We ask that you not use the downloadable solutions as a shortcut for doing the exercises. The act of typing in code has far more impact on your learning than most people realize. By typing the code yourself (and, yes, making mistakes), you will absorb patterns and develop instincts about Cocoa programming, and you will miss out on these benefits if you rely on the solutions or copy and paste the code instead.

There is a lot of code in this book. Through that code, we will introduce you to the idioms of the Cocoa community. Our hope is that by presenting exemplary code, we can help you to become more than a Cocoa developer a stylish Cocoa developer.

Most of the time, Cocoa fulfills the following promise: Common things are easy, and uncommon things are possible. If you find yourself writing many lines of code to do something rather ordinary, you are probably on the wrong track. There is a popular adage in the community which you should bear in mind: Dont fight the framework . Cocoa is opinionated and you will benefit greatly from adapting your way of doing things to its way of doing things.