[GigaChip]

I hope I placed this in the proper forum.

Hi! I am a new member of the forum although I have read it daily along with MacCentral.com and others for the past two years or so.

I purchased a 14" iBook in February 2002 and currently have Jaguar 10.2 installed. Been using OSX pretty jmuch most of the time and I like it a lot. I am a real life switcher from Win98 although this is the first place I have declared it. OSX is what got me to switch, and I have never regretted it.

I would like to get started programming and developing some apps for OSX. Either brand new apps or to customize ones such as iTunes, web browsers, etc.

I am not that familiar with programming and I do not have the time, as a 32 year old career man (separate from computers) to go to college full time. But I use a lot of time on the computer and have enough spare time that I think I can put my time to better use, such as learning programming on my own for now.

I am not that familiar with any of the languages such as AppleScript, C, C, Cocoa, Carbon, Perl, Python, etc. So I would like to know if you folks can help me with some resources to get started properly learning what would be most useful to me right now.

Either web resources, books at Amazon.com, publications, etc.

I would appreciate all of your help and thank you ahead of time for it. I am ambitious and I promise if anything is accomplished I will share the fruit of my labors with you all.

Look forward to a good thread!

[Nobody]

Go to Apples site and sign up with their ADC (apple DEveloper Connection) program. If you don't already have their free developer tools (project builder, etc.) you will then be able to download them (assuming you have high speed connection - it's a large download). Apple also has loads of info to help developers get started. I also recommend the developer forum at Apple for useful info: Developer

[CrecenS]

I think the first question you need to ask yourself is what do you want to program for? What you want to do with programs will dictate which languages you should use. Do you want to program for anything in particular?

[maflynn]

Since you don't have any programming experiance its best that you start off with realbasic which I beleive goes for about $99.00 (I could be wrong about the price).

Real Basic is powerful enoough to write robust applications in OSX but easy enough to get the ball rolling and not get overwhelmed.

Mike

[Nobody]

I have a couple books you can try. I think they're really helpful and everyone else I know thinks so too. They're "Thinking In Java" and "Thinking in C". They're both well written and both available for free online at www.bruceeckel.com. His C book is one of the more complete ones I've seen. Check them out, I think they're a great place to get started.

[Skyler]

Personally, I think to become a self-taught programmer with no training or experience, that you should start with apple script or even hypercard if they still make it.

C and C are very powerful, but to do all the calls and use the toolbox (do they still call it the toolbox in OSX?) can be daunting. Applescript handles all the nitnoid details and allows you to concentrate on the actual functioning of the program you want to write.

That is,you still need to get the hang of error handling, but you aren't burdened with the sometimes overwhelming details in the lower level languages.

The stuff you can do with Applescript is limitless, and many applications work very nicely with it as well, allowing you to call routines inside of them.

Starting with C or C in a self-taught environment is a big job. Not impossible, just big and difficult. You'll get much quicker results with a higher level language and that will help you learn the lower level language when you're ready to jump over that cliff.

[GigaChip]

Thank you very much for the replies folks! I am going to try Applescript and possibly Realbasic eventually.

I will let you know how I do. Hopefully at some point I will be able to take a class or get some professional instruction to round it out.

If I have any questions, can I count on you folks for support?

[Nobody]

I deffinetly reccomend a class or a book on how to design programs at some point. When you first start out your code is scattered just a mess. Everyone does it. At my school we called it spaghetti code. Successful programmers learn to write clean code. This is one of those finer points that's harder to get out of a book.