Continued study of iPhone App Development - The Missing Manual. You know it's a crash course when an entire programming language is covered in a one-chapter overview. I've been half-lost, but chugging forward in the hopes that the overview will give me enough context to be able to work through the tutorials and documentation available online. Stanford has a free iTunes U course in iPhone application development, which is well-reviewed, but it assumes prior knowledge of C.
By later in the day, and after more hair-tearing at the author's pace, I'm backing away from the iPhone App Development book - for now. Randy Pausch in the Last Lecture told us that brick walls are there to teach us how badly we want something. And I'm stubborn. But I recognize when an approach isn't working and I need to try something else. Apparently most of the resources for learning iPhone application development assume that if you are not already a Mac developer, that at least you already know Objective-C. The resources for learning Objective-C assume that you have been programming in C for ten years or so, and just want to learn Objective-C as a variation, or for dessert.
So... Learn C, then Objective-C, then the iPhone SDK? And how long will all of that take? Further searches led me to a very active forum - which turned out to be for a book which teaches both C and Objective-C at the same time. The book has very positive reviews on Amazon and it is designed to be understandable by novice programmers, Programming in Objective-C 2.0 by Stephen Kochan. The author even responds to forum queries promptly.
So here's the revised study plan: buy and then work my way through Programming in Objective-C 2.0, with the help of the forum. THEN turn to iPhone-specific books, free online tutorials, and the Stanford iTunes U course, which by then will likely include details on developing for the iPad as well as the iPhone.
And in the meantime, make what sense I can out of the book I currently have.
