Learning Cocoa

Rating:
Summary: Poor construction & minimal content
Review: This is the only computer book I have ever purchased whose pages began to fall out within hours of its arrival. As for the content, it offers very little that is not covered in much greater detail in the Apple documentation provided free with Dev Tools. This is most likely the last O'Reilly book I will ever purchase!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent intro for a half-newbie
Review: Well, I'm familiar with programming scripting languages (PHP, PERL, etc.), but have never delved further into OOP than simple Java. Sure I've picked up some C and C++ books, but even the O'Reilly publications on those languages weren't as clear on the foundations as this one. Perhaps it's the OS X development application that's so cool, but the book has empowered me to understand how to use it, and *more importantly* to feel comfortable exploring it. In the first seven chapters, I had a solid angle on how to construct a functional graphical application (try that, Java...which generally after seven chapters gets to "Hello World"; graphics are far far into the book). Objective C is a language I do not know, and the constructs are all new. With a good balance of learn-by-example and learn-by-definition, this book has certainly given me enough to go on for decent applications, and a great grounding for really learning Objective C should I choose to pursue it. Four stars because I really enjoy it. Minus One because it could be too complex for a total newbie (though do-able).