About Objective-C Essentials

Why are you reading this?

On the surface this sounds like an odd opening sentence for a programming book. After all, if this were a book about JavaScript or PHP I'd be safe in assuming that you planned to develop some kind of web site or web application. Similarly, if this were a Visual Basic book it'd be a good bet that you had plans to write a Windows application. Indeed, had I asked this question a few years ago, I could have guessed with a reasonable level of confidence that you wanted to learn Objective-C in order to develop some software to run on Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Now, however, there is a greater likelihood that you plan to develop an application to run on the iPhone.

The iPhone, after all, runs a special version of Mac OS X. Given that Objective-C is the programming language of choice for this operating system it should come as no surprise that before you can develop iPhone applications you first need to learn how to program in Objective-C.

The objective of this book is to teach the skills necessary to program in Objective-C using a style that is easy to follow, rich in examples and accessible to those who have never used Objective-C before. Topics covered include the fundamentals of Objective-C such as variables, looping and flow control. Also included are details of object oriented programming, working with files and memory, the Objective-C Fundamentals framework and installing and using Xcode.

Those who have developed using other programming languages such as C, C++, C# or Java will find much about Objective-C that is familiar. That said, there is much about Objective-C that is unique. Even experienced programmers should therefore expect to spend some time learning before becoming proficient in this increasingly popular programming language.

Whatever your background and experience, we have worked hard to make this book as useful and helpful as possible as you traverse the Objective-C learning curve.

The main focus of this book is the development of applications that will run either on an Apple Macintosh computer running Mac OS X or on an iPhone. As such, it assumed that the reader has access to a Mac system running a relatively recent version of Mac OS X.