Objective-C Pocket Reference

Objective-C is an exciting and dynamic approach to C-based object-oriented programming; it's the approach adopted by Apple as the foundation for programming under Mac OS X, a Unix-based operating system gaining wide acceptance among programmers and other technologists. Objective-C is easy to learn and has a simple elegance that is a welcome breath of fresh air after the abstruse and confusing C++. To help you master the fundamentals of this language, you'll want to keep the Objective-C Pocket Reference close at hand. This small book contains a wealth of valuable information to speed you over the learning curve. In this pocket reference, author Andrew Duncan provides a quick and concise introduction to Objective-C for the experienced programmer. In addition to covering the essentials of Objective-C syntax, Andrew also covers important faces of the language such as memory management, the Objective-C runtime, dynamic loading, distributed objects, and exception handling.

User review
Compact and full of information on a weird language.
As an advanced C++ programmer trying to pick up Objective-C (a weird freakin' language if you ask me), I found this little Pocket Reference to be invaluable. For one thing, its really small which I like -- who needs another tome to litter the bookshelves? I find that it is well written, I actually just started reading it from the beginning and found it to be pretty easy to follow. Finally I = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@`Understand`]; the crazy formatting for Objective-C methods which just looked like jibberish to me at first. Believe me, after 20 years of programming I can usually understand languages that I've never touched before -- I really needed this book to help me get a handle on Objective-C and it did a commendable job.

Negatives: of course, this is not exactly comprehensive. Since I am also learning Cocoa, I would have liked a little more Cocoa material mixed in. I did find that the writing was at times a bit confusing when discusssing some of the more abstruse concepts of Objective-C. And, always, I like lots of real code examples -- perhaps that just isn't feasible in a book this compact.

Overall, this is a very good book for a newcomer to Objective-C. With this in one hand and Google in the other I can get by quite nicely as I write my iPhone Apps.

User review
Convenience Pocket Reference
It is very good & convenience pocket reference book for Objective-C programming particular for new Objective-C programmer.

User review
Good reference
The big complaint I have is that I am new to Objective C and the author decided to change the terminology for Instance Variables or iVars to fields. So while reading this book I have to stop at every word `field` and substitute iVar or Instance Variable in my mind but it is such a common word that it gets lost when reading. This is very frustrating and no other book I've read on Obj-C uses the term `field` like this, so this seems mostly the authors personal choice.

Otherwise it is a good reference.

User review
Best quick refference for Objective-C
I have just about every book on Objective-C that you can find. Mainly because I love books. The two that I find most helpfull as a non-programmer who is self-teaching are this little gem and 'Programming in Objective-C'. What I like about this book is that it shows the basic form and structure used in ObjC with very little clutter. It is not a book to learn from so much as a book to distill concepts into managable bites. Armed with this book and Programming in Objective-C will get you well on your way to programming in C, ObjC, Cocoa, and GNUstep (which is mainly what I am learning). All the other books get you deeper in the quagmire, yet for the most part assume that you the knowledge covered in these two books. This is the 'Ah Ha, now I see!' book when you have basic knowledge and need to get right to the point. I sometimes forget to look here first, usually to my irritation. Just buy it.
Also note that I am a big fan of all the 'in a nutshell' books as secondary refferences.

User review
This book has holes and needs edits
I'm attacking Objective-C from the perspective of a C# and former VB and Java developer, with some knowledge of C as well. I'm trying to actually read through the book as a fast jump-start into understanding the syntax, and although it does well for this, I found this book a bit frustrating at times. It leaves a few fundamental terms unexplained and then carries on using them as though the reader understands.

For example, what are namespaces in the context of Objective-C? In C#, they are simply explicitly declared container names. In Java, they are the same but also a file system hierarchy. In C, AFAIK, namespaces don't exist. But the book frequently says things like `classes are in the global namespace` and `categories are in their own namespace so they can have the same name as classes`. What are namespaces in Obj-C? How on earth do you work with these namespaces??

Code examples from one to the next have nothing to do with the previous, so as you learn a new keyword, and you see a one-line syntax example, you have no other code to see it in context,, such as, hello, how on earth would I *use* that after invoking or declaring it?

It also failed to explain `field sections`. One of the reasons I BOUGHT the book was because I didn't understand why some things are declared in braces in the interface declaration, and some things are not, but are still before @end. The book said nothing about these braces and what they're containing. It just said, oh hey, there's no semicolon after @end. (Over and over again, needlessly.) I only figured it out by inference--and am still not sure if I'm right--when I came across the `Category` sample code and where in sample code there's often an area in braces with fields there was instead the comment, `// No field section.` Ah. So I guess whatever goes in braces is supposed to be fields.

The book is also obsolete. Objective-C 2.0 has since been released, and this book doesn't cover that. It's dated 2003.

So the book doesn't do a good job as a syntax tutorial like I hoped. But I'll admit that it came really, really close. If the book had these missing components, it would only be about 10-15% thicker I imagine, though, but I don't feel that there's any excuse as it's not just small, it's thin.