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I would really like some advice from you guys out there on the bunch of questions I have in my head:

  1. I know C, and C++, but I don't know anything about objective C, what is the best resource out there for a walkthrough/tutorial (aware of primer but if there are others ... )

  2. Using the current objective c resources that I have I am actually planning on doing a simple walkthrouh on pure objective c programming first before I jump into the more cooler stuff like cocoa touch etc. Pertaining to this, I am unable to create a pure objective c project that is not part of any sub project or inherits/imports from another class, The path I attempted to follow was:

Create a brand new EMPTY IOS Xcode project that has no build, target or configuration:

This seems the most likely way but it does ask me what subclass this is a part of. I am not interested in dealing with any of that since I want to simply experience creating objective c classes from scratch.

  1. Are there other IDE's available for the MAC that support Objective C.
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  1. A really good resource is the Lynda Xcode 4/iOS programming guide. I used it when I was getting started. It shows you how to do stuff, gives you walkthrough examples which give lots of concepts a context, and tells you about theory and concepts behind the language.

  2. As far as I know, there is no way to create an empty project in Xcode. However, there's also little point to learning Objective-C without learning about Xcode iOS and Cocoa too, since you'll probably never use Objective-C for anything except iOS or Mac development.

  3. Xcode is the best environment by far, not least because no one really uses Objective-C except Apple, and Xcode is designed to work with iOS and Mac Applications. If you're really determined, there is a plugin for eclipse called ObjectiveEclipse, which has closed down but is still available for download. There's also an IDE called Kdevelope.

Hope this helps,

Luke

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Lynda material is nice because you can easily watch how to use Interface Builder which usually much harder to explain in words. However, I would suggest getting some books to understand better the language and the Cocoa touch framework. The best books that I've read are Programming in Objective-C and iPhone programming
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  1. If you're going the iPhone route, you won't do much better than Erica Sadun's iPhone cookbook.

  2. Bear in mind that there's little point in learning objC if you're not going to be programming for Mac or iPhone. Start off with a Mac or iPhone 'hello world' as a goal.

  3. You can use Xcode for 'pure' objC, I'm sure, but really, you're asking for frustration if you choose not to use Xcode (why not?)

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I can understand why he wouldn't want XCode. I personally hate the thing. But I also think there is nothing better out there (which IMO is pretty sad).
:-) For the record, I do like Xcode, though there are occasions that it frustrates...
all of these sound like excellent answers, yes learning objective C to develop for iOS, however, wanted to get a hang of the nuances of the language before anything, thanks guys!
@Snips: I'm going to have to disagree with you on the Sadun book. I've found it to be pretty subpar. I'd definitely recommend the "Programming iOS 4" book instead oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010258 I teach an iOS course and use it as the textbook.
@jbrennan That's cool. There are highly regarded books that I don't rate (Hillegass) but a stack of books (and Stackoverflow ;-) will be useful for a beginner :-)
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This is a pretty great book for iphone developments: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-iOS/dp/143023024X It uses xcode3 rather than xcode4 but its basically the same thing.

For objective-c projects in xcode you might as well be inheriting from Foundation or NSObject. Everything for mac or cocoa touch inherits from NSObject at some point.

Lastly I as well would choose to use xcode for anything objective-c. But another great IDE for many other languages would TextWrangler.

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It's difficult to separate the Objective-C language from, at minimum, the Foundation framework. Nearly every Objective-C object inherits from the NSObject class in the Foundation framework because NSObject implements a number of fundamental behaviors related to memory management and other things. It's possible to write your own root class to replace NSObject, but that's topic that's beyond advanced. It might seem simpler to learn the language first and then add the frameworks, but believe me when I tell you that won't be the case.

Since you already know a couple of C-based languages, I think Apple's Learning Objective-C document is the best place to start. That document links to The Objectivive-C Programming Language, which goes into a lot more depth.

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I learn objective-c with the the Vermont tutorials which have since been turned into a book, Objective-c is designed to write GUI applications, a lot of the features do not show there benefit until you start writing applications which behave like a collection of program components instead of a simple hello world application. So to really understand the benefit of objective-C you are going you are going to have to write a real application.

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You really want this book:

iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (2nd Edition)

This is written by the person owns Big Nerd Ranch, I think, the premier iOS teaching boot camp. "iOS Programming" is on amazon and iBooks and real book. It helped me more with understanding cocoa and view controllers. But Aaron does go through a couple of chapters of objective c teaching and exercises.

If you know c really well, objective c is a snap. So much easier than C++.

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