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Is it realistic to try to dive right in to the 500-page book they provided without a computer science background, just HTML/CSS/PHP self-taught experience, to l

Is it realistic to try to dive right in to the 500-page book they provided without a computer science background, just HTML/CSS/PHP self-taught experience, to learn the language? Or should I take other steps first?

krenoten 12y ago
Reading a book cover-to-cover is, for me, a bad way to learn a language. I usually pick things up very quickly when I try to implement things using them that I am both familiar with and faced with annoying issues stemming to the language they are currently implemented in. If you don't have one of those, think about something you hate, and fix it with this. If the book is good documentation, then use it. But you may benefit from focusing more on problems than completing a book.
lugg 12y ago
Just read the first paragraph and conclusions if the have them, of each chapter. This will give you a good idea of what's there when you need it. Then I'd jump straight into tutorials. Honestly skimming 500 doesn't sound horribly hard to me. I've done that a few times to pick up something new. As ap said you won't learn the language like that but you will have a good reference to go and learn from after the fact. After that you could probably work through the examples in said book, or at least the interesting ones. P.S. above steps is all I really learnt from my cs degree.
- josephjrobison 12y ago
  And is this the exact same language - http://www.cs.cornell.edu/jif/swift/doc/index.html http://www.cs.cornell.edu/jif/swift/doc/index.html
  - cschmidt 12y ago
    No, it is completely unrelated. That is the other language called Swift.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- cnp 12y ago
  Skimming through it has been great. It's quite well-written and you'll get a lot of the concepts that the lang introduces even if the extent of your programming education is JS. Give it a try :)
stormbrew 12y ago
The copy I have is only 366 pages, but it's 'converted' from the ebook so I'm not sure if that's a factor. A lot of the pages are dedicated to an examination of the grammar that's probably not relevant for a language overview and the rest is really readable and easily skimmed for interesting details. It's broken up with simple and clear examples every few paragraphs as well. Definitely take a look through it. You definitely don't need to be a language nerd to understand it.
golergka 12y ago
I'm 20% in, and you certainly should give it a try. It's very well-written, explains basic concepts really well, and has a lot of examples. It also has a good flow from the basc features to more advanced ones.
- josephjrobison 12y ago
  Great, thanks - will give it a shot!
golergka 12y ago
I'm 20% in, and you certainly should give it a try. It's very well-written, explains basic concepts really well, and has a lot of examples. It also has a good flow from the basc features to more advanced ones.
hrktb 12y ago
I think it's a good idea only if you execute code in parallel, following all the examples. Otherwise there's a lot of notions than already exist in Objective C that are glossed over and would be pitfalls for people new to the runtime.

krenoten 12y ago

Reading a book cover-to-cover is, for me, a bad way to learn a language. I usually pick things up very quickly when I try to implement things using them that I am both familiar with and faced with annoying issues stemming to the language they are currently implemented in. If you don't have one of those, think about something you hate, and fix it with this. If the book is good documentation, then use it. But you may benefit from focusing more on problems than completing a book.

lugg 12y ago

Just read the first paragraph and conclusions if the have them, of each chapter. This will give you a good idea of what's there when you need it. Then I'd jump straight into tutorials. Honestly skimming 500 doesn't sound horribly hard to me. I've done that a few times to pick up something new. As ap said you won't learn the language like that but you will have a good reference to go and learn from after the fact. After that you could probably work through the examples in said book, or at least the interesting ones. P.S. above steps is all I really learnt from my cs degree.

josephjrobison 12y ago
And is this the exact same language - http://www.cs.cornell.edu/jif/swift/doc/index.html http://www.cs.cornell.edu/jif/swift/doc/index.html
- cschmidt 12y ago
  No, it is completely unrelated. That is the other language called Swift.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
cnp 12y ago
Skimming through it has been great. It's quite well-written and you'll get a lot of the concepts that the lang introduces even if the extent of your programming education is JS. Give it a try :)

stormbrew 12y ago

The copy I have is only 366 pages, but it's 'converted' from the ebook so I'm not sure if that's a factor. A lot of the pages are dedicated to an examination of the grammar that's probably not relevant for a language overview and the rest is really readable and easily skimmed for interesting details. It's broken up with simple and clear examples every few paragraphs as well. Definitely take a look through it. You definitely don't need to be a language nerd to understand it.

golergka 12y ago

I'm 20% in, and you certainly should give it a try. It's very well-written, explains basic concepts really well, and has a lot of examples. It also has a good flow from the basc features to more advanced ones.

josephjrobison 12y ago
Great, thanks - will give it a shot!

golergka 12y ago

hrktb 12y ago

I think it's a good idea only if you execute code in parallel, following all the examples. Otherwise there's a lot of notions than already exist in Objective C that are glossed over and would be pitfalls for people new to the runtime.