A favorite part of the learning process for me has always been submerging myself in something; opening it up and staring at all the pieces and trying to understand how they all work together and what each piece of the puzzle does. While I realize there’s plenty to read, and a lot to learn, I get impatient and need to see everything in context. Even when I was little I would dump all the pieces to see if I could figure it out(whatever ‘it’ was) and decide if I even needed the instructions at all. I’d read the instructions, but only if I had to, or to see if I’d gotten it right. My dad used to laugh at me for this, but it’s always worked well for me.
I found what’s probably the perfect article to dump the iPhone pieces all over the floor: ‘Your first iPhone application.’ It’s about as simple an application as you could imagine but it definitely gives you a taste of what lies ahead. I’ve been through it twice now, and it’s settling in and making sense. I followed along and got the app running on my phone. Very cool. Now that that’s out of my system, I can move along to the details..(the instructions!). I ordered what looks like a great book from Amazon which I hope will facilitate the process of mapping out an application that will allow our concierges to demo products. I’ve always felt that working on something that actually matters – that you can use or actually need – is the way to really gain some worthwhile experience.
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Rich, that’s definitely the best book available. I have a couple of different ones and this one is the best. Also, not sure about your Objective-C knowledge, but if you’d like to improve, Learning Objective-C on the Mac from the same publisher is great! Actually, it’s probably the best programming book I’ve ever read.
Cool, Anatoli! Psyched to hear you’re working on iPhone stuff.. good to have another resource out there. I’ll check out the obj-c book, too..thnx.