Progress: Day 3

IDE Updates:
Okay, so a few of my complaints about the IDE over the past few days have been the multiple windows for everything, no real good way to manage them, no persistence for where windows stay, etc. It's been driving me crazy, like to the point that I've complained to my wife, who also codes occasionally. She's laughed at me. A lot.

Anyway. Since I've complained about this I've done a little bit of research and found that there is a way to get an interface a little closer to what I'm used to. This article on 'Reducing Xcode's Window Clutter' was the answer I was looking for. There is an 'All in One' mode that basically consolidates all of them into a single window IDE with a set of toggle buttons to change your viewpoint. This was a wonderful thing for me. Might not be as big of a deal for non Microsoft developers, but it's made the transition less painful, as the interface seems more similar at this point.

Language Updates:
Now that that barrier is out of the way I've gotten down to some real development. Wow. Talk about some serious differences in syntax. Now that I've moved into looking into more Object oriented programming in Objective-C, we're starting to see the differences appear fast and furiously compared to before.

Some basic differences so far:

• Definitions of Enumerations and Structures.
• Declarations of Objects
• Instantiation of Objects
• Use of Objects, Properties, & Methods
• Inheritance, Composition and Overloading differences

Later, I'll go into detail about some of these differences.

Overall Updates:
So, overall, I've gotten a pretty good feel for the IDE. I've gotten a pretty good feel for the basic language constructs. I've gotten a pretty good overall feel for the basics. Now, it's onto the intermediate concepts.

Snow Days. ;P

So, I've taken the past couple of days off. I've been lax in my learning and experimenting in Xcode and Objective-C. See, there's been this blizzard that hit Denver, didn't know if you all heard. So, I've been lazy. That is, when I haven't been shoveling snow, playing with the kids, or listening to amazing music or writers do readings live.

All that being said, hopefully in the next few days, I'll be getting back into the swing of things. Same plan as before, OO concepts next, then something called CoreData which I hear is Apple's happy data access technology, then serious work on design patterns, and then moving on into wiring up UIs to rich objects.

Anyway. Fun stuff. Probably to start back up on Monday. Right. Have a great rest of the weekend guys and gals.

Progress: Day 2

So, managed to make my way around the Xcode IDE a little bit today. Got in, wrote a few console style applications, all throw away code, but all in the hopes that I would be able to get a feel for the tool. To some degree, I have a better understanding of what is available to me and what I can do with it. This is a GOOD thing.

Tomorrow, I have to take as a downtime day. People coming into town and I must clean and prepare for company, so no coding or exploration can be done. This is okay. I need the mental break anyway.

So in brief summation for today:

• Can create new projects
• Can write and run said projects
• Can set breakpoints and step into code
• Can leverage most of the debugging tools, although, a call-stack still seems to be eluding me.

Although, I want to get in and write something with a UI, I am not. This is considered rushing things. I will pace myself.

The goal for Friday is tackling OO concepts in Objective-C and learning the difference in syntax (if any) from C#. So far, language differences have been minor. The ones I've seen so far have been around pointers and memory management / garbage collection. (Imagine that?)

Anyway. Have a great Thursday and I'll see you all back here on Friday!

IDE Woes

The first thing I've noticed with the transition to working with Cocoa and Objective C has been the massive difference in the working environments. Visual Studio felt like home. Where Xcode feels like a foreign country to me. It is very much the same lost feeling I had when I fist made the transition from Windows XP to the OS X world. Nothing was familiar. I didn't know my way around. If it hadn't been for prior *nix experience I'd have been totally lost and a complete 'Stranger in a strange land' if you will.

Okay, so I've got this project started, no issues there. Pretty small potatos to get that going, great. Now what? I mean, I'm looking at this crazy IDE that is totally new to me. No solution explorer, no property panes, no intermediate or watch windows as I am used to them. What's a Microsoft developer to do at this point?

Yeah, I googled it - "learning objective-c"

This lead me to a few things.

• Thing 1 - Apple's Developers reference For all of us Microsoft guys, this is Apple's answer to the MSDN Help Library

• Thing 2 - Learn Objective–C on the Mac by Mark Dalrymple & Scott Knaster This has been a great book so far. It feels a bit rudamentary for anyone who's been doing development for a while, but when switching platforms, languages and enviornments, it is moving exactly the speed that I need. I think I would be overwhelmed otherwise.

So where does that leave me now? It leaves me with a lot of reading while I figure out the interface and how the tools work. I'll hopefully have a few small trial apps written tonight and tomorrow as i get more familiar with the toolset and will post a little more about the trials and tribulations. ;)

Stay Tuned.

Finally.

It's been a grueling several days of fighting with the look and feel and the maddening ordeal it has been of trying to get Blogger to play nicely with my templates to get things working mostly how I want them. I think I'm finally there. So, with that being said, development on the iPhone and iPod Touch application will begin in earnest tomorrow. This will mean I'll be updating here with the progress.

What this means for all of you:

• Updates on Design and \ or Pitfalls
• Updates on what I've learned about Cocoa and Objective-C vs C# and VB.Net
• My thoughts on mobile device design and development vs classic web and desktop development.

Typically, I'm not an Apple developer. I've been a strict Microsoft developer, so this is all a learning curve for me. I'll be posting my thoughts about the transition from Microsoft technologies to Apple tech as well. For now, this is all just a work in progress on the site. I'll let you all know before making any sweeping changes. ;)

For now, Enjoy the ride.