Ok, so first up I signed up for the iPhone Developer Programme. I paid my $99, because I wanted to get to look at iPhone OS 3.2 and the new capabilities of the iPad. The developer guides are useful, but I found them to be less that useful at getting started (yes I did read the getting started guides!). I think the big problem was getting my head around Objective-C – whilst I might be a C programmer, O-C is a big enough departure to cause problems. I found the syntax of @interface’s and @implementations to be rather cryptic. It makes no sense to me to use + and – to indicate the difference between class and instance methods when a word, such as ‘static’ would have been clearer. But I’m slowly coming through it!
After a couple of weeks (spare time) of trawling and not writing a single line of code, I decided that I ought to get a book to add some structure. I’ve normally be dismissive of books on development, as they are often no more than a rehash of the original API documentation, and don’t include much in the way of practical insights, but Sams Teach Yourself iPhone Application Development in 24 hours has been good at cutting through the crud. Nicely presented with clear code samples, it keeps reinforcing the bits that you really need to know, whilst gradually skipping over the things that you will have learned already. I read it without sitting in front of the computer to try the examples and it all made a lot of sense. I eventually sat down and hand typed in one of the examples from Hour 16 on Reading and Writing data, as it most closely matched some of my initial app ideas (not the app specifically), but the behind the scenes stuff. App worked first time, and I felt like I knew what to do next on my own app.
The ball is rolling!
