Great Price "iPhone for Programmers: An App-Driven Approach (Deitel Developer Series)" for $22.23 Today
As a former programmer who hadn't done any significant programming in several years -- and that largely in COBOL, to boot -- when I decided to start looking into creating apps for the iPhone/iPod, this was the first book I bought. That turned out to be a mostly-good, slightly-bad decision.
First, the bad:
The "bad" in this case has not so much to do with the book as with the way I used it. This book was my first-ever introduction to Objective-C, Xcode, Interface Builder, and iPhone programming in general. My only exposure to that entire world was in using an iPod Touch my wife got me for my birthday. You can use this book that way, but if, like me, you are a complete novice in the Apple world, you might want to consider taking advantage of some of the free education you can find on the web before you dive into "iPhone for Programmers." At least get a sense of how the SDK components fit together and what is meant by outlets, connections, and so on. It might not be a bad idea to order the book from Amazon and start learning from the web while you're waiting for it to arrive.
Now, the good:
Most programming books illustrate the concepts with which they are concerned by using trivial, totally useless examples and out-of-context code snippets. That may work sometimes with very basic stuff, but it doesn't do a lot for trying to put everything into context. This book is not like that.
Here you get actual usable -- and useful -- apps, along with step-by-step instructions as to how to put them together and get them to run. You get to see how to add components in Interface Builder and how to add them programmatically. You get explanations of developer conventions. You get downloadable code you can check against the code you type in when you have problems. In short, you get code with a point.
Organization of the book is fairly straightforward. It begins with explanations of how to register as a developer and acquire the SDK. You then get a very handy walkthrough of how the App Store and submissions to it work. Then you switch over to coding. That too is presented in a logical progression; you start with fairly simple but complete apps and work your way up to more complex ones. The authors do a decent job of tying the "what" of how you code with the "why" of how it all fits together.
If you thrive on examples as opposed to simply exposition, this is the book for you.
iPhone for Programmers: An App-Driven Approach (Deitel Developer Series) Features
- ISBN13: 9780137058426
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Price : $39.99
Offer Price : $22.23
iPhone for Programmers: An App-Driven Approach (Deitel Developer Series) Overviews
The professional programmer’s DEITEL® guide to iPhone app development using iPhone SDK 3.x, Xcode®, Objective-C® and Cocoa®
More than 1.5 billion iPhone apps were downloaded from Apple’s App Store in just one year! This book gives you everything you’ll need to start developing great iPhone apps quickly and–once you’ve joined Apple’s fee-based iPhone Developer Program–to get them up and running on the App Store. The book uses an app-driven approach–each new technology is discussed in the context of 14 fully tested iPhone apps (7700 lines of code), complete with syntax shading, code walkthroughs and sample outputs. Apps you’ll develop include:
- Welcome
- Spot-On Game
- Route Tracker
- Tip Calculator
- Cannon Game
- Slideshow
- Favorite Twitter® Searches
- Painter
- Voice Recorder
- Flag Quiz Game
- Address Book
- Twitter® Discount Airfares
iPhone for Programmers include practical, example-rich coverage of:
• iPhone SDK 3.x, XCode®, Interface Builder
• Object-Oriented Programming in Objective-C® and Cocoa®
• Collections, GUI, Event Handling
• Controllers, Application Templates
• UIView, Multi-Touch™
• Core Audio, Core Animation, NSTimer
• Tables, UINavigationController
• Map Kit, Core Location, GPS, Compass
• Photos, iPod Library Access
• Serialization
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Customer Review
Complete examples, no explanations - Gary Bisaga - Leesburg, VA USA
I am not sure what I am missing that all these other reviewers are getting, but I found this book extremely frustrating. Though I looked at the book in the bookstore and was turned off by it, on the strength of the reviewers I went and bought it anyway. I sorely regret doing so. By the way, I am not a newbie programmer: I've been a strong developer for 30 years, most recently writing J2EE enterprise applications since 1996.
On the plus side, there are (as other reviewers have said) complete examples of applications, all of which you can download from the book publisher's web site. You can - after spending hours poring through the code examples - find many of the details of how to hook up the pieces into real applications.
However, for me, this advantage was completely wiped out by providing very little explanation of what is going on. Beyond the first chapter or two, explanation of what's going on in the Interface Builder is non-existent. When the application (which there was also no explanation for) doesn't work, you're left trying to figure out what you didn't hook up in the Interface Builder (which wasn't explained). Also, there is no categorized explanation of what you're dealing with - just code examples. If an interface method is not in a particular code example, you have no idea that the method exists. Just page after page of code, with textual explanations that are very little better than the code comments themselves. I could never imagine using this book beyond the initial learning curve - there's nothing you could call a "reference." Finally, the page after page of method listings are not in any way connected together: you have to keep flipping back and forth to figure out what class a given method belongs to. And at least one sample app (the Address Book) does not build for me.
I think the Interface Builder problems point out the overall weakness of this book. Code examples might be ok for a purely code-based system, but developing iPhone apps is not - at least, the way it's presented in the book - a code-driven approach: it all starts in the Interface Builder. More coverage of that tool might have pulled the pieces together.
All in all, good context of its examples, but did not at all work for me to learn iPhone programming. I've been much more impressed with iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual.
Related to Items You've Viewed
- The iPhone Developer's Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone 3.0 SDK (2nd Edition)
- Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition)
- Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
- More iPhone 3 Development: Tackling iPhone SDK 3 (Beginning)
- iPhone SDK Development (The Pragmatic Programmers)
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