It took me a while to learn Objective-C.
I started at the most basic level, wondering at the language. What are these brackets? What’s with the @ signs? What’s the difference between a – and a +? These aren’t hard things to learn, but understanding the reasoning behind them helps. And then there’s a point where it suddenly makes sense.
But the framework was confusing. How do I do this? Though I was less confused, this one isn’t solved directly. I became competent. And I started to ask the best question: “Why?”
The patterns were still confusing. Why does this work this way? What’s the purpose of this? Why is this done, but not this other thing?
And then there was a point where the patterns became obvious. More, the pattern in the patterns became obvious to me. And now, I look to find more examples of patterns, and patterns of patterns, to better build my knowledge.
It took me a while to get here, and it’s the same for every language. I’m feeling pretty confident about Objective-C now.
Back on the first day, I was confused and lost.
Man does that ever sum it up. I came from a non-object oriented background. Converting from Pascal to Objective C was like getting a Russian to teach a Frenchman how to speak Japanese. There was a lot lost in translation….
I hear you, Howard. I bounced from Pascal to C++ about three years ago, and from C++ to Objective-C this year. You might think knowing C++ made it easier, but it actually made it harder. C++ was the Russian in my case.
The parts you need to know about C to learn Objective-C are mostly simple enough that I already knew most of them just from accessing stuff I needed to in C from my Pascal projects.
Which is why the only real approach to learning Objective-C to burry yourself in it.