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I don't think Objective-C is hard at all. If you understand OO or come from a OO language you can pick it up pretty fast, like in a day or two. Cocoa on the ot

I don't think Objective-C is hard at all. If you understand OO or come from a OO language you can pick it up pretty fast, like in a day or two. Cocoa on the other hand requires much more learning curve. Also apple could improve their documentation. I'm currently working on a OSX app, and Objective-C has been a breeze, with the new ARC is even more easy to work with.

objclxt 15y ago
Really? If you compare Apple's documentation to Android's...they're worlds apart. Here's a good example: I'm an iOS developer, and have been since pretty much day 1 of the platform. I recently actually started playing around with the Android SDK, and environment. I followed Google's supplied tutorial for creating a tabbar app, and asked one of the Android devs who works with me to come take a look at the finished result. "Oh", he said, "that's deprecated now. We don't do tab bars like that any more. We use fragments instead". And sure enough, when I looked closely, Eclipse was telling me what I'd done was, in fact, deprecated and Google recommended a different approach. Except I'd followed their main tutorial for Android, step by step. Compare this with Apple, who have consistently updated their documentation for each API release. How Google could possibly think it's a good idea to deprecate a major platform feature for fragments (a good thing) and not update one of the most popular tutorials on their site to reflect this (the 'Hello Views' tutorial) is beyond me.
- phatbyte 15y ago
  I never really worked with Android so I can't speak for it. But I completely agree with you on the updated documentation, I just feel that sometimes I get a little lost when I trying to learn how to use a class or framework.
- dpifke 15y ago
  Why does a comment about Apple's documentation need to turn into a holy war versus Android? The parent said that Apple "could improve" their documentation, not that it was worse than Google/Microsoft/IBM/whomever.
  - 286c8cb04bda 15y ago
    > The parent said that Apple "could improve" their documentation, not that it was worse than Google/Microsoft/IBM/whomever. Do you have any examples of big libraries where "they could improve the documentation" is untrue? I can't think of any offhand. (This is not snark. I'm honestly interested if you do.) APIs are perpetually under-documented, in my experience, so the parent comment's observation is essentially an empty statement.
- matwood 15y ago
  Comparing any other documentation to Googles is just too easy since Google is generally very poor. IMHO, the best documentation out there is still MSDN. Apple's documentation is fine, but still not up to MSDN level IMHO.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  This is hardly consistent even in Apple's world. I recently went through your exact exercise myself, except instead of tabbars in Android, it's Core Data storage in iOS. The vaunted Core Data + iCloud integration is woefully underdocumented (actually, it's practically undocumented), with the main resource being a mega-thread on Apple's dev forums, where every few pages someone from Apple will chime in with ever more confusing suggestions, and yet never updated sample code nor docs. I really don't think "shitty documentation" is a uniquely Android thing, nor is it something iOS has resolved.

objclxt 15y ago

Really? If you compare Apple's documentation to Android's...they're worlds apart. Here's a good example: I'm an iOS developer, and have been since pretty much day 1 of the platform. I recently actually started playing around with the Android SDK, and environment. I followed Google's supplied tutorial for creating a tabbar app, and asked one of the Android devs who works with me to come take a look at the finished result. "Oh", he said, "that's deprecated now. We don't do tab bars like that any more. We use fragments instead". And sure enough, when I looked closely, Eclipse was telling me what I'd done was, in fact, deprecated and Google recommended a different approach. Except I'd followed their main tutorial for Android, step by step. Compare this with Apple, who have consistently updated their documentation for each API release. How Google could possibly think it's a good idea to deprecate a major platform feature for fragments (a good thing) and not update one of the most popular tutorials on their site to reflect this (the 'Hello Views' tutorial) is beyond me.

phatbyte 15y ago
I never really worked with Android so I can't speak for it. But I completely agree with you on the updated documentation, I just feel that sometimes I get a little lost when I trying to learn how to use a class or framework.
dpifke 15y ago
Why does a comment about Apple's documentation need to turn into a holy war versus Android? The parent said that Apple "could improve" their documentation, not that it was worse than Google/Microsoft/IBM/whomever.
- 286c8cb04bda 15y ago
  > The parent said that Apple "could improve" their documentation, not that it was worse than Google/Microsoft/IBM/whomever. Do you have any examples of big libraries where "they could improve the documentation" is untrue? I can't think of any offhand. (This is not snark. I'm honestly interested if you do.) APIs are perpetually under-documented, in my experience, so the parent comment's observation is essentially an empty statement.
matwood 15y ago
Comparing any other documentation to Googles is just too easy since Google is generally very poor. IMHO, the best documentation out there is still MSDN. Apple's documentation is fine, but still not up to MSDN level IMHO.
potatolicious 15y ago
This is hardly consistent even in Apple's world. I recently went through your exact exercise myself, except instead of tabbars in Android, it's Core Data storage in iOS. The vaunted Core Data + iCloud integration is woefully underdocumented (actually, it's practically undocumented), with the main resource being a mega-thread on Apple's dev forums, where every few pages someone from Apple will chime in with ever more confusing suggestions, and yet never updated sample code nor docs. I really don't think "shitty documentation" is a uniquely Android thing, nor is it something iOS has resolved.