This book is excellent. If you are new to Apple's development tools, and interested in learning iPhone programming, even if you don't have any previous programming experience. This is a great book to start with. I had my 12 year old read the first 100 pages of this book for a basic programming primer in Objective C and then switch over to reading Dave Mark's equally excellent Beginning iPhone Development - Exploring the iPhone SDK, and by the end of the weekend he had written his first basic iPhone app.

Overall this is a good introduction to Objective-C. Programmers proficient in C will find some sections rather basic but the authors do say in the preface that no programming experience is assumed. The text is also a good book to read before reading Apple's text.

This book just seems to be a bit out of date which is why I didn't give it the full 4 stars. Wait for the next version.

This is an excellent introductory book on Objective C programming language as used for the Apple Macintosh and Apple iPhone. It is very clearly written, with good examples, and good exercises that help reinforce the concepts that need to be learned. I used this book to become proficient in Objective C in less than 3 weeks.(Note I have previous experience with C language and the Macintosh programming language so your learning rate may vary) I highly recommend this to those seeking to learn or review Objective C.

Don't waste your money on this book like I did. It too out of date to be of any use. Mac Xcode has changed too much since this was published.

Excellent!

I got this almost by accident in a bundle of books I picked up on eBay and it is the single best written 'how to learn a language' book I have ever encountered.

Clear, concise and just so well written. Quite complex issues are handled with great skill and deftness.

I have pre-ordered the 2nd edition just to give Kochan the credit he deserves and didn't get from my second-hand purchase.

If you have a Mac and think you want to understand programming (even if you aren't going to really write any programs) get this.

Whatever OS you have go get Kochan's book on C Programming which is nearly as good. Unfortunately C is simply more obtuse so even Kochan's great writing can't make it much easier than he does because it just is closer to the metal with all the power and complexity that that means.

Anyway it's a great book and if you want some of the best coverage of Object Orientated Programming you'll read anywhere it's easily worth the price (especially at the insanely cheap Amazon price).

If you are new to Objective-C and are teaching yourself, do the following.
A. GET THIS BOOK.
B. Get the Objective-C Pocket Reference.
C. Get programming.

In short, this book is a perfect start developing form Mac and also iPhone, the title is a bit misleading as it only mentions ObjectiveC but the fact is that it takes you in a very coherent and well written fashion to C and also Cocoa framework.
Great book, buy it.

I wanted a book I could read very quickly. This book was written in an easy-to-learn style and I plowed through it really quickly. It is intended as a very introductory book and if you have any knowledge already of Objective-C it might be a bit basic, sometimes even a bit too basic. The first part is the basics of the Objective-C language second part is an introduction to some of the more important parts of the Foundation Framework (but not AppKit). Overall I enjoyed the book because it met my needs of a quick introduction/overview book that I could read quickly.

As someone who uses object-oriented programming on a near-daily basis in the workplace, but who has only academic experience in the C language (from many years back), this was a very digestible book.

I hesitated to purchase the book due to that I see there is a 2nd edition coming up soon (and already available for pre-order), so I was tempted to wait for it, but I decided to make the purchase anyhow, since my objective (no pun intended) was to become grounded in the language, and I figured this would do the trick.

What strikes me the most is the talents of this author, to write lucidly, and precisely, and in a non-intimidating way. I feel it helped to have several years of programming behind me, so the concepts didn't present much issue, but I could see that, in my opinion, it would even be a good first book for learning object oriented programming, and I wouldn't doubt it a bit if I was to discover this book might be used by a number of college instructors as a class textbook.

All in all, this is a very well written book for a very decent programming language. I would recommend it, but keep in mind the possibly fast-approaching 2nd edition if you aren't the type to want to have to buy the book twice.

Programming in Objective-C describes the basis of the Objective-C language. Several good chapters. The book is from 2003 and relates to Project Builder the tool before Xcode. Currently Xcode version 3 is around. The book lacks what must be newer lauguage features Objective-C 2.0 like @synthesize.
The book needs to be modernized.
I bought the book for making iPhone applications, for this the book is too old.

If you want to develop applications for the iPhone, you'll need to learn how to program in Objective-C. This is the best resource for doing that. Kochan explains each feature of the language using clear, simple examples and a straightforward and concise writing style. Even if you're a relatively new programmer, you can learn how to write Objective-C programs from this text. Unlike other references on Objective-C, Kochan does not assume you know how to program in C as a prerequisite. This is a good thing and a key pedagogical point, as the foundation for object-oriented programming is laid right from the start. Instead of having to learn how the underlying procedural C language works first, you are instead taught from the beginning to think in terms of classes, instances, and methods.

Once you have learned Objective-C from this book, you'll be ready to move on and tackle Cocoa and the frameworks that Apple provides to write iPhone applications. This book makes that task that much easier. The bottom line is that this is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn Objective-C and who needs a clear, well-written tutorial to lead the way. Only very experienced object-oriented programmers need not apply!

This books assumes the reader has no programming experience at all. I can't imagine choosing Objective-C as a first language. And if you are, I would discourage you from doing so.

If you have some software programming experience at all, you will find most of this book a waste of time and space on your shelf.

If you are beginning, and you have a little background of C, well this might be your book. Everything is very kindly explained just for beginners. But if you already know C and want to start from Objects and everything related with the Foundation framework, well you will see that half of the book is not for you. Because 300 pages are of C programming and not specifically of Objective-C programming.
But the examples are very good, and if you forgot something you can find it very easy because is very well organized.
As the super tiny title "Is an introduction."

This book is useful for any Mac OS X developers who just started to make programs for this platform.
It not only teaches Objective-C, but also the programming basics, and the use of the base collections of the Foundation Framework.

This book is best for those new to Object-Oriented programming who want to learn Objective C. It is less useful to those who want a solid understanding of programming technique and OO design, as it tends to skim over both. It is also less useful to experienced programmers who want to switch to Objective C, as it spends many pages interweaving basic concepts with those specific to Objective C.

For programmers of several years, I recommend looking for a terser book. For new programmers, I recommend considering picking up an intro to programming book instead of or in addition to this one.

Also, this book tries to teach Objective C for all platforms, and as such spends its first hundred pages teaching memory management that appears to be at odds with Apple's preferred methods. Its second half teaches Apple's pre-Objective C 2.0 method (retaining and releasing), which as of 2007 has been somewhat displaced by garbage collection.

As its title suggests, this is an introductory level book on Objective-C. The current interest on Objective-C application is mounting presumably due to the imminent release by Apple Inc. of the software developer's kit for the iphone and the ipod Touch. As a novice in computer science (I actually had taken a 101 on BASIC in early college years), I found this book to be extremely appropriate for anyone who is looking for an introduction course in Objective C. The book is very well organized. It stages itself well in the early chapters with simple examples of computer coding. Progressively, the author guides the readers to the relevance of some of these examples to the idea of object oriented programming (OOP). Throughout the book, it delivers coherently the concept of OOP and its potential advantages over typical non-object oriented programming. The pacing of the book is such that readers at the introductory level feel invited, rather than intimidated, to continue the learning process. I enjoy reading this book tremendously.

This is a great book if you want to learn objective-c 1.0 and are looking for a quick read. It assumes that you have no programming experience which makes it really easy and provides a good refresher on C based programming in case it has been a while for you.

If you are looking for a book on the foundation framework with the intention of doing some programming on the Mac then look else where. This book does not cover the entire framework and its material is a little dated.

!Take Note! This book covers objective-c 1.0 so it does not cover "properties" and "fast enumeration" which were the major features added to objective-c 2.0 which is the current version of objective-c.

First, I just got the book and haven't read through it much. Please see the other reviews for info about the contents. I just want to point out to people who are considering this book as a basis for iPhone development to be wary of the publication date. The book is quite old. It does not cover Objective-C 2.0 (used for iPhone software). That's not a big deal (there aren't too many differences between 2.0 and previous versions of the language, that I know about anyway). However, I was a bit concerned that the book starts off talking about Apple's "project builder" on the Mac and mentions that a new program, "XCODE" is being written to replace it. Well, XCODE is up to version 3.0 these days. So the book is missing a *lot* of information that would be handy for someone like myself who is coming at this from a PC programming background and knows *nothing* about Mac/Objective-C development.

Again, I want to emphasize that I'm not in a position to comment about how well the book covers the Objective-C language and the applicability of this book to iPhone development. I would just point out that if you're in the same position I'm in, it might be worthwhile to consider waiting for a revision or looking into other sources.

Having said that, the Apple documentation on the Objective-C language is absolutely terrible. So maybe the combination of this book and Apple's documentation will work. That remains to be seen.

The pedagogy is sound and provides a strong foundation for beginning Obj-C progammers. You don't have to be in Mac OS X to make use of this book.

I am a professional Java developer and working with object oriented design every day. Originally I thought let me just pick up a Cocoa book and start the coding quickly. I then realize that Objective-C is a very different object oriented language. This book does not assume any background of C language, and explain things in real detail from the real Objective-C point of view. After reading this book, I found that Objective-C was an elegant addition on top of the original C programming language. It achieve all object-oriented features without over complicate the original language. If you want to learn Objective-C, this is definitely the book to start from. Since Objective-C is supported by GCC compiler, this book also tells you what is Mac OS X specific, and what is supported by all platform.

This book was quite easy to read. Although I have some limited programming experience, I think this would be easy for someone who is not expereienced in programming at all. The exercises and descriptions in the book were easy to understand and helped by having you write code that applies the principles in ways that reinforce the ideas. My one knock on the book is that it does not go into Xcode which is what you use to develop code on a Mac. However, I think that might be another book in itself for those of us that aren't very experienced with programming.

This book was quite easy to read. Although I have some limited programming experience, I think this would be easy for someone who is not expereienced in programming at all. The exercises and descriptions in the book were easy to understand and helped by having you write code that applies the principles in ways that reinforce the ideas. My one knock on the book is that it does not go into Xcode which is what you use to develop code on a Mac.

This is a great book I haven't finished it yet, since the semester started, but so far it's been very clear and effective. It introduces the idea of objects early and effectively, which is nice for someone who already knows how to program in C and wants to learn how Objective-C can be supplement what I already know.

This is a great book for a beginning Objective C programmer. The only con is that it is a little out-dated and slow. Still though for beginning Mac OS X programmers it is indispensable.

Kochan is an educator and that comes through VERY clearly. To give you some perspective on where this review comes from - I am a Macintosh Systems Engineer. Before Kochan's book, I had read part of the Second Edition Absolute Beginners Guide to C by Perry, which was great, then tried to read Hillegass's Cocoa book and had to give up. I moved on to my certifications and installing Xserves, learning to shell script in Bash and all that jazz then came back to programming with Kochan's book.

ANYONE INTERESTED IN COCOA PROGRAMMING WHO DOES NOT KNOW OBJECTIVE C SHOULD READ THIS BOOK FIRST. You may be able to get away with not reading it if you are already a programmer familiar with object oriented programming. But for a server admin like myself, this book was a godsend. You may not even need to learn C before reading this, though it couldn't hurt. Certainly I was not an expert in C when I picked this book up.

The examples are great and give you some useful tools with which to build your own programs. Everything you read on Cocoa programming will be MUCH easier if you wade your way througth this masterpiece first. This book is strictly Objective-C. No Cocoa. It's implied that you're probably reading it because you'll want to program for Macs (and I certainly did), but it remains platform agnostic. And it is not a hard read at all! Well, the section on operators and variable types is a bit dry, but when you get back into loops, qualifiers and conditions, you'll start smiling again!

I love programming. I have always thought of it as a combination of geometry (postualtes and theorems) and algebra that allows you to be infinitely creative. Kochan's book makes Objective-C seem like an easy place to start building your applications and tapping the power of your computer! I am grateful for this text!

Kochan is an educator and that comes through VERY clearly. To give you some perspective on where this review comes from - I am a Macintosh Systems Engineer. Before Kochan's book, I had read part of the Second Edition Absolute Beginners Guide to C by Perry, which was great, then tried to read Hillegass's Cocoa book and had to give up. I moved on to my certifications and installing Xserves, learning to shell script in Bash and all that jazz then came back to programming with Kochan's book.

ANYONE INTERESTED IN COCOA PROGRAMMING WHO DOES NOT KNOW OBJECTIVE C SHOULD READ THIS BOOK FIRST. You may be able to get away with not reading it if you are already a programmer familiar with object oriented programming. But for a server admin like myself, this book was a godsend. You may not even need to learn C before reading this, though it couldn't hurt. Certainly I was not an expert in C when I picked this book up.

The examples are great and give you some useful tools with which to build your own programs. Everything you read on Cocoa programming will be MUCH easier if you wade your way througth this masterpiece first. This book is strictly Objective-C. No Cocoa. It's implied that you're probably reading it because you'll want to program for Macs (and I certainly did), but it remains platform agnostic. And it is not a hard read at all! Well, the section on operators and variable types is a bit dry, but when you get back into loops, qualifiers and conditions, you'll start smiling again!

I love programming. I have always thought of it as a combination of geometry (postualtes and theorems) and algebra that allows you to be infinitely creative. Kochan's book makes Objective-C seem like an easy place to start building your applications and tapping the power of your computer! I am grateful for this text!

I'm a Naval Architect needing to code in Objective-C and I was scared to death when I first read the documentation available on apple's website on the matter. But this book make it all clear and simple. If you're a bigginer or that you haven't encountered object oriented programming, this is a very good introduction.

For a Ruby programer interested in learning Objective-C I found this book to be perfect for a newcomer. In fact I find this to be the best C related book I have read. Highly reccomended.

This book was a very good introduction to the Objective-C programming language. Before I bought this book I did have some programming experience in PHP and Perl, but I did not feel like such experience was needed in reading the book. More importantly, it did not matter that I had no previous C or C++ experience. It is important to note that this book does not really cover making applications for Mac OS X in depth. In addition to purchasing this book I also purchased "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass, which did a much better job of covering the specific aspects of making Cocoa applications.

This book condenses all basic stuffs about C programming and the Objective-C extension. It is kind of introductory material about these two languages and may be read in two or three hours by the experienced programmer interested most in Objective C.

This book is well written and easy to follow. It is a great book if you fit into one of the following categories.

Programming novice (From a novice review: Chapter 3, Classes, Objects, and Methods, pretty much cleared up all the confusion I've ever had about object oriented programming.")
Crusty veteran C developer (From a crusty review: "A vetran[sic] C++ programmer, I found this book to be a quick way to come up to speed on Objective-C")
Experienced, but clueless programmer (Clueless review: instead of learning procedures, as you would with C\C++, you learn about objects and how to use those objects in a productive way.)

If you are an experienced OO developer in a language other than Objective-C, you will quickly become frustrated with the pace and tedium of this book. I do not fault the author in this respect. He wrote a good book that applies to a majority of the possible readership.

The author also positions this book as a book for those without prior knowledge of C.

" Readers can also learn the concepts of object-oriented programming without having to first learn all of the intricacies of the underlying procedural language (C)."

However, he is doing you, and your future coworkers a great disservice by maintaining this fantasy. Without prior knowledge of C, you will probably be a pretty awful Objective-C developer.

Coming from a PHP background, this book was a perfect and thorough introduction to Objective-C. This is a great book for starters, and especially for people who are coming from a background in a non object-oriented language. After reading this book, I feel confident enough to write a fairly complex and powerful program that takes advantage of Objective-C and NextStep features (for the command line - you'll need to learn Cocoa for GUIs). In addition, there is a handy appendix that recommends a few invaluable books that will bring you further to becoming a full-fledged Cocoa programmer.

As a recommendation to all who would like to learn C-type languages (or any programming language) - you may first want to learn about the way in which computers store data (bits, bytes, words). Knowing this beforehand has helped me greatly to grasp the concepts of pointers and memory management (independant of any book on C).

I was given this book as a birthday gift and having a little experience in computer programming with languages like Pascal, C#, C and C++ and a little bit of BASIC. I have always wanted to build my own programs using the latest and greatest programming languages but I didn't know where to begin.

I was trying to do some of the online tutorials and reading books on C\C++ but the author of the book or tutorial assumed that the person learning the language had prior knowledge of the language, which I had none.

I wanted a language that was object-oriented and Objective-C fit the bill, because instead of learning procedures, as you would with C\C++, you learn about objects and how to use those objects in a productive way.

If you want to learn about object-oriented programming, then buy this book then go and read Apple's own book on Objective-C. I am in part 2, Chapter 15, page 315 of the book and have learned a lot since I got the book.

The examples and exercises in the book are very easy to do and understand so you're not sitting at the computer scratching your head trying to figure out what the author is trying to tell you, try to find that in any other book on programming languages.

I find it absolutely amazing how much information can be learned from this book. All I can say to the author is thank you so much for making computer programming fun.

This book was a great help in learning the Objective-C language. It focuses on the language and touches on sme specific areas of Cocoa. A vetran C++ programmer, I found this book to be a quick way to come up to speed on Objective-C.

The organization is well thought out and clearly written. It would be a great book for a someone who has never programmed in C and for vetrans wishing to learn a new language. The book is easy to read and organized in a manner that makes it quite useful as a reference after reading it.

In general, this gets high marks from most reviewers, but I did not like it. I think the reason is that I have been a fairly competent C programmer for many years. So half the book was telling me things I already knew (what is a++ etc). Even worse, the other half had an elementary viewpoint. It was intended to help you rote learn mindlessly.
As I read about the language features I did not know, many obvious questions occurred (Why on earth would anyone use this apparently kludgy and inefficient NSNumber class? How does init differ from a C++ constructor?). But there was no intelligent discussion of such issues, you were left to figure it out for yourself.
There were also too many minor typos in the code examples.

It is has the worst thing that can ever happen to you in you life! It is riddled with DRM errors, Adobe does not support it or people donot have a clue about how to deal with ebooks. Stay away from it as plague!

I learned C using Mr. Kochans' "Programming in C" book and I left yet another glowing review under that one a year ago. This one is not quite as easy to follow, but the concepts themselves aren't as easy as C was, so I can't fault the author. If I had not read his Objective-C book before starting into the Hillegass book, I would have been MUCH more frustrated trying to understand Cocoa. In the beginning of the Hillegass book he had me clicking and dragging stuff in the Interface Builder, doing his best to explain the concepts to me (somewhat unsuccessfully). Then, when he has you look at the actual code that was generated by all of the clicking-and-dragging, the proverbial light bulb came on... I said to myself "Stephen explained all of this in his book".

Reading just the first half of this book will help you understand ANY Cocoa book better.

Thanks again Stephen.

New Mac computers come with a full suite of excellent objective-c programming tools called Xcode. This book is a great way for inexperienced programmers to learn ObjC without feeling overwhelmed. When I first decided I wanted to take up programming for the Mac, I was concerned that I would feel overwhelmed with arcane terminlogy and confusing explanations. I was very gratified to start into this book with no programming experience other than old school apple //c Basic and be able to write simple programs right from the start. That instills a sense of confidence that I think is essential to success in learning. The author makes sure that you understand what each line of code is for and you never feel like you're typing something that you don't understand.

I purchased this book as a bundle with "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass. I actually cracked that book first and successfully programmed my first example program. However in chapter 3 he writes "..this chapter assumes that you already know a little C and something about objects..". Since I have no C experience at all and only know about objects as "things", I put that book down and started with "Programming in Objective-C." I'm glad I did. This book focuses more on learning objective-C and touches only a little bit on how to use Xcode. Once I get further along I'm sure that the Hillegass book will be an excellent book for me to learn from.

If you're looking for 2 books to get you started in programming Objective-C, I would highly recommend the 2 book bundle.

This is THE place to start learning to program for OSX. Other books are more comprehensive, and deal w/ the GUI interface integration, and they are important too. However, if you want to learn how to program for the Mac, don't get a C book, just get this one. Then you will be ready to learn from other "Cocoa" books. I am just beginning to teach myself Cocoa (and programming in general), and I was pretty lost w/ the whole thing until I got this book. I can't reiterate it enough-- This is THE place to start for the novice programmer interested in programming Cocoa.

As far as the book itself goes. It is very well written, examples are clear, and the author does not assume you've mastered a concept simply because he mentioned it in a previous chapter (a problem w/ many of the other intro books out there). The pacing seems appropriate, and the examples are clear. Another reviewer mentioned the bit operation section as being difficult, and I also didn't really get it myself. However, the good news is that you don't use these operations in Cocoa except in very rare circumstances, so as a novice, you can just ignore that stuff. If you bought any of the other intro to Cocoa books and gave up, buy this, and you'll be able to understand the others better.

Here was my post to the cocoa-dev mailing list (slightly updated as it's a year old):

FROM : Steven Harms
DATE : Thu Jul 29 01:03:34 2004

...[W]e are both in the early stages of learning Cocoa and would like to apply our experiences in other languages to make learning Cocoa easy.

Part of the heuristic of 'how to learn' starts with an editor, a
compiler, and "here is how you declare a variable" - we then move toconditionals, loops, objects etc. Without that education I felt very naked in the O'Reilly books.

I read the first 15 chapters or so of Stephen Kochan's _Programming in Objective-C_ by SAMS press. I am now going through Hillegass' book and am very pleased (outside of the mail i sent moments ago!).

Kochan's book gives enough familiarity in the basics to demystify a lot of the Cocoa work -- Hillegass does a very good job in building up the basics. I would recommend this path to the absolute beginner.

Steven

....

I stand by this post in a very serious way. I really love ObjC just for itself. I'm thinking about teaching my girlfriend how to program, and I'm definitely thinking about using Objective C because it is regular, sensible, modular, OO, and a lot of fun.

It's amazing just how cool ObjC is. It's really quite too bad that most of the Cocoa books (which is why you're really looking at this book, isn't it?) just kinda slap things around loosley with respect to nailing down the essentials of the Objective C language.

I guess they figure they've got to get us to Interface Builder quickly or else our TV-eroded sense of instant gratification kicks in and turns their book into a doorstop (if that's the case, do you /really/ have any business being a programmer?)

In any case, the only ORA press book that does anything considerable with the ObjC foundation is Davidson's book but then the example is fairly trivial (a CD database) and some of the fundamental primitives of the programming language are not even broached.

This foundation is where Kochan excels. Contrary to other reviewers I love that he teaches from a text editor + compiler approach. I think that the Xtools that apple provides makes writing Cocoa a bit *too* easy. As a result I don't really understand what I'm doing. Much like a child who has learned a series of signs and expressions and can utter them, the mental clay has not been marked with the meaning of those symbols.

If you want to learn Cocoa, I still say put away XTools and ORA press (as good as they are at most other things). Start with Kochan, (vim|emacs), and gcc and get your basics down. From there you'll have an excellent foundation and won't be confused / irritated / baffled by "unexplained magic" that appears in other cocoa books.

Without teaching optional APIs, Kochan gently guides the reader into Objective-C. The best part? There is no prior C programming knowledge required. Well written, fairly well edited, this is a great introduction to Objective-C. I highly recommend this book.

Chapter 3, “Classes, Objects, and Methods,” pretty much cleared up all the confusion I've ever had about object oriented programming. I can’t believe how simple it is to understand once I got over the mental hurdle of object-class-inheritance-method OOP stuff. Actually, it quite reminds me of something one of my ECE 264 instructors tried to teach: separating the interface from the implementation. In this case we were building a library of functions to deal with complex numbers. In OOP parlance, we would have defined a ComplexNumber class, defined its methods, and implemented the methods available to the class.Anyhowways, if you're new to programming and interested in developing for Mac OS X, I highly recommend picking it up. It doesn't cover all the GUI stuff, but it will give you a very good foundation of the underlying concepts of OOP and excellent coding tips.

Stephen Kochan books are always clear and concise and deliver all the material you need to know in a straight forward way. While I have been programming in ObjectiveC for since 1990, I bought this book to add to my library. To my surprise I realized that I also own a very worn 1988's copy of Programming in C.

One interesting twist on this book, is that it doesn't presume that you know how to program in C so it covers the C underpinnings of the language.

The introduction states (page 2): This book does not assume much, if any, previous programming experience. In fact, if you're a novice programmer, you should be able to learn Objective-C as your first programming language from this text.

These sentences are utterly incorrect. Bitwise operations and non decimal math (octal and hexadecimal), in particular, are not explained well. If you know these terms, you will be able to muddle through however. I took away no stars for this issue.

The book is chock full of errors that unfortunately seems typical of so many technical books published currently. (Be sure to get the errata.) Some errors are easily understood typos, while others are confusing. I took one star away for these errors.

Overall, the book has helped me learn Objective-C.