Cocoa Programming for Dummmies

I've been trying to teach myself Cocoa for over a year now. OS X is an absolutely stunning piece of software, and I love the idea that Apple includes in the box a full set of developer tools I can use to create my own little OS X masterpiece.The problem, however, is the learning curve. For a first-time programmer, Cocoa is one tough nut to crack. There are lots of third-party books out there now. Unfortunately, they are all geared toward experienced programmers. Every book assumes fairly extensive C or OOP programming experience, and none cover basic programming or Objective-C in sufficient detail for the complete programming newbie. While this book isn't really an exception to the rule, the approach is definitely more newbie-friendly. I purchased the book on a Thursday, and finished it on Sunday evening with a much greater appreciation and understanding of Cocoa technology. What made the difference? For one, by the time this came out, I already had some exposure to the underlying technologies: I trudged through Apple's Objective-C documentation (hard-going for non-programmers, but after a couple of read-throughs, the material starts to gel). I did the Currency Converter tutorial, which got me familiar with Project Builder and Interface Builder, the two most important tools in Cocoa development. I read various other portions of Apple's on-line documentation, and looked at some tutorials available on the web. As noted, I'd also taken a crack at some of the other books available on the subject, throwing in the towel on all of them before hitting page 100 or so. None of this taught me how to program in Cocoa, but it gave me enough background to tackle this book and understand just about every topic covered.If, and probably only if, you've at least looked at Cocoa and Objective-C before (or have significant experience in C, Java, Smalltalk, or other OOP), you will be able to not only work through, but understand, the exercises in this book. And the exercises are very practical and clearly explained. Rather than build a book-length, professional quality application, the author builds small, toy applications to demonstrate Cocoa patterns that you can actually use to build your own software. For example, the chapters on text handing, window management, and file and folder management, are clear and concise, allowing the reader to work through them quickly and without complication. This fast and dirty approach, at least for me, had the added benefit of allowing me to get through the book in less than a week, take a step back, and appreciate how all I learned could be used to start building my own, more complex project.I'd like to thank Mr. Tejkowsi for being first to market with a Cocoa beginner's book that actually works for beginners. His effort gave me a taste of the power of Cocoa, and the confidence to return to other, more advanced texts that I'd walked away from before. Thanks to him, I'm not ready to give up on Cocoa just yet!