bronxbomber92 Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 Hey, well let me describe my small amount of experiance in programming before I go on. I only started programming late 2005. I was completely new t programming, and I'm into the whole "PSP (Playstation Portable) Dev Sene" so I decided to learn a rather simple scripting language called Lua... I have been programming in that for a few months now, but not constantly, only in my free time. Mainly I have been learning c++ lately. I have a ok understanding of c++, as I have been reading up on it for about 2 weeks now. I know that may sound like I know nothing about c++ since 2 weeks in not much time at all, but I can make simple application in command prompt (on my bootcamp wondows). Nothing special, but I hope to get better. So now onto my question. I want to program for mac (obviously) but I'm unsure on which language to learn. I'm thinking about c#, cocoa and possibly either java or carbon. I don't know much about any of these languages, so any explanation of them, and which is best to learn to make application (and prefereably games) for mac would help a lot. Also places to learn these languages would help a lot. I think c# is a shoe in to learn, sonce it can be used on windows also and is "supposively" more efficient/better then java (?). Cocoa and carbon I really know nothing about, so I would like to learn which ever is closes in syntax (or whatever) to c++. Also I have heard about objective-c? Is that c but with mac oriented commands? Thanks for all help, links to tutorials and ebooks and explanation of each language. Everything is appreciated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pu7o Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 C# isn't even a good language to program for the mac, unless you want to use Mono... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
INFNITE Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 Java would be a good language to start out with. That's what they teach at CS101 courses so that must mean something. It's a relatively easy to learn language and it's pretty useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclipxe Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 bronxbomber92 - It's good you have an interest in programming! My suggestions: 1. Learn JAVA - you can write native OS X apps as well as cross-platform apps. Once you know the JAVA syntax, C# is easy. 2. A good way to learn the language is to check out online tutorials and download a few open-source applications. After you read a few JAVA books, see if you can figure out some simple open-source apps and pick up some of the coding style/architecture hints. Cocoa and Carbon are APIs (functions and libraries you can use) that work with both JAVA and Objective-C on OS X. They aren't actual languages, but extensions. MONO is really nice (running an EXE on OS X? OH YEAH!) but it takes a bit to setup and there is no good GUI right now. Get Eclipse running with JAVA and you'll become more comfortable with it in time. Shoot me a PM if you have any questions... -Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bronxbomber92 Posted August 12, 2006 Author Share Posted August 12, 2006 Thanks for the suggestions. So this is what I am planning. 1.) I am reading a c++ book, so obviouly learning that 2.) Today I went to borders and got the cocoa/objective-c book by aaron hillegass 3.) Will learn java once c++ is complete, then learn c#... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheoCryst Posted August 19, 2006 Share Posted August 19, 2006 Yeah, I've heard that the Hillengrass book is really good for beginner Mac programmers. As soon as I get a little cash, I'm gonna pick that up, plus "Step into Xcode" by Fritz Anderson. It looks like a fairly solid book, which is also recent enough to thoroughly discuss universal binaries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bronxbomber92 Posted August 19, 2006 Author Share Posted August 19, 2006 The only problem with the book I got is that it assumes you know some c. Yet it doesn't really explain classes. So I need learn classes first before I continue reading that book >.> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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