I thought I’d give you a quick post on some of the things helping me on my quest to be an iPhone developer. Basically, I rely on a toolkit of resources that guide me when I need advice, to lookup something to to see how someone else is doing it.
1) Use the XCode Documentation
When you develop with XCode, using the Documentation which has the API references for classes you work for is extremely vital. Learn to use contextual help searches (clicking on a class name in code and cascading to help for that class). You need to work out which delegates to use, what properties are mandatory etc, so this is vital. In addition Apple have provided links to sample codes for contextual help, so you can look at a practical guidance on how to do something.
2) Getting Help
When you are stuck on a piece of code, this site has helped me quite a bit. It’s Stackoverflow.com. This site isn’t Objective-C specific but its extremely useful for posting up any tech question and tagging it for your specific language or context, and allowing others to come by and assist you. It’s great and free!.
3) Make use of RSS
I cannot emphasise this enough, but gradually compiling a list of important RSS feeds on good Objective-C/iPhone sites is vital to you learning to become a good programmer. Some of the sites I use and recommend are:-
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If anyone has any more, I can amend it onto here.
4) WWDC
Well, if you can’t afford to fly to San Francisco each year to attend the Apple Developer Connection – Worldwide Developers Conference 2009, you can download the WWDC 09 Videos (they cost about $US 300) and they are fantastic, they are the complete presentations with sample code, to get you going.
5) Books
Amazon is your best bet to find good books on iPhone development. There are tons of books and some are good, some are bad. I don’t have great experience with which are the best books, but looking at the reviews would help you garner a good idea of what might be useful for your level.
.. And of course, practice makes perfect, so keep on coding.
tempdoron 