Hillegass's book is an excellent resource for someone getting started with Cocoa Programming on OSX and one reason is that although it doesn't "assume you're r

Hillegass's book is an excellent resource for someone getting started with Cocoa Programming on OSX and one reason is that although it doesn't "assume you're retarded", it doesn't try very hard to make you think much. Hillegass goes over what you need to know to be a functioning member of the Cocoa/OSX society but doesn't invite you to question its core values. I've only read a little of "From C++ to Objective-C" http://ktd.club.fr/programmation/fichiers/cpp-objc-en.pdf http://ktd.club.fr/programmation/fichiers/cpp-objc-en.pdf but it seems similar in spirit to Hillegass's book, telling you things you should probably know about how Objective C deals with some of the same issues C++ does. While it clearly expects you to be knowledgeable about C++, I would say it's only slightly more sophisticated than Hillegass's book. It doesn't really seem to force you to think much in order to get value from it. Having programmed for a while, the only programming books that make me think are ones that are either - very specific and highly technical (e.g Schneier's "Applied Cryptography") - very general (e.g. Kernighan & Pike's "The Practice of Programming") or - define the language (e.g. Ierusalimschy's "Programming in Lua") it's pretty rare for me to find a good programming book that can both challenge me to think in a useful way and also be useful in other situations where I don't want to think. Hillegass's book is good but sadly isn't one of them. However if such a book existed for Objective-C I would buy it in an instant.