Ask HN: Experienced programmer, beginner to iOS (objective-C). Where to begin?

I was two years out of school working on C# and WPF when I was tasked with writing an iOS app. My first steps to gain knowledge of the syntax/structure/etc of the language was to watch the Standford CS139p lectures (<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/ipad-iphone-application-development/id473757255" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/ipad-iphone-application-dev...</a>). I only had to watch the first six or so before I had a good knowledge of the language and the starting point of UIKit. From that point I just started brute forcing it.<p>Reading Apple's documentation was the fastest way for me to ramp up and they actually include a lot of really useful examples. Even lower level things like CoreGraphics have some in depth examples which will probably be what you need for your "Flipboard" like interactions.<p>Because I do so much iOS dev I have my own "library" I now use for every project. But it was cobbled together over a couple years and inspiration was taken from many open source projects.<p>I probably learned the most from Jeff Verkoeyen's GitHub projects, his Nimbus framework being one of the best <a href="https://github.com/jverkoey/nimbus" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jverkoey/nimbus</a><p>If you need to make web requests in your app (which basically every app should) ASIHTTPRequest is an interesting framework. <a href="https://github.com/pokeb/asi-http-request" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pokeb/asi-http-request</a>. I took the idea behind this and distilled it down to something that was much simpler which is what I needed. ASIHTTPRequest is sorta the kitchen sink of web request clients.<p>If you need a relational database in your app, sqlite is a simple include away. There are a lot of wrapper frameworks out there but I didn't use any of them. I wrote my first app directly accessing the C API and then wrote my own wrapper framework for it. Because I had never used SQLite before needed it in iOS it helped me learn a lot more about it.<p>If you need to store username/password/token/etc for the love of god don't make the novice mistake of saving to NSUserDefaults. Save to the Keychain <a href="https://github.com/reidmain/FDKeychain" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/reidmain/FDKeychain</a><p>One thing I'd point you to is my collection of Categories and Macros that I put into every project <a href="https://github.com/reidmain/Objective-C-Categories-and-Macros" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/reidmain/Objective-C-Categories-and-Macro...</a>. Specifically pay attention to FDIsNullOrEmpty, NSObject+PerformBlock, UIView+Layout. I use these categories so much that I always include them in my precompiled header file.

I am going through the exact same thing. Last weekend I decided iOS would be my project for May and started digging in.<p>There is a TON of information out there. Too much. Most of it is outdated, and while the Apple documentation is a great resource, it is just not structured in a way for beginners.<p>Enter the Big Nerd Ranch.<p><a href="http://www.bignerdranch.com/book/ios_programming_the_big_nerd_ranch_guide_nd_edition_" rel="nofollow">http://www.bignerdranch.com/book/ios_programming_the_big_ner...</a><p>I think I got the kindle version for $22. It is perfect. Just released a little over a month ago, it uses Xcode 4.3. The first few chapters have no iOS stuff as they bring you up to speed on Obj-C and from there you start building the bases of iOS.<p>I love that they make you strip out all the code from the iOS templates and make you do it yourself. It really is a structured learning experience rather than just an information dump.<p>I'm only about 1/3 the way through so far - but so far it's been exactly what I needed.

Read the docs from Apple. Believe or not, they are the best resources for an experienced developer. Start with the Objective-C 2.0 book/entry. Then, go from there.<p>Of course, if you didn't say you were experienced, I'd have suggested that you start with the (what now must be like a) gazillion different apress/o'reilly books on the topic.<p>Good luck!<p><i>The book: <a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/cocoa/conceptual/objectivec/objc.pdf*" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/cocoa/...</a>

Stanford's course is often recommended. I just started going through it myself.<p><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/ipad-iphone-application-development/id473757255" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/ipad-iphone-application-...</a>

For your level of experience I would go would go with Kochan - <i>Programming in Objective-C</i> 4th edition.<p>There is also a free course for iPhone programming from Stanford (video lectures).<p>MonoTouch is a good alternative if you prefer to use C#, but you will need to pay 99$/year to Apple + 399$ for Monotouch. The good thing is that you can evaluate MonoTouch and pay after you are comfortable with the tool.<p>RubyMotion is too young to be used in a large application. Also learning Ruby and Cocoa in the same time can be difficult. I think RubyMotion is a good fit for an experienced Ruby programmer that wants to start coding on iOS. Another potential problem with RubyMotion is that it is currently developed by a single person, which can be problematic on long term.<p>That been said, muy advice is to go on the Objective-C route since you are already comfortable with C. Objective-C is a small language and an experienced C programmer can be up to speed in a matter of days.<p>The real challenge is in learning the iOS libraries and not the programming language.

I'd say there's no quick way to do it, the message passing of obj-c is very different than the event-based slots &#38; signals programming you are used to. And that's before the hell-which-is-InterfaceBuilder. Since you already familiar with programming, I'd suggest the Big Nerd Ranch guides at bignerdranch.com<p>Most online examples won't give you the details about the important stuff - single inheritance vs. categories, delegates and message passing in the runtime, extending a protocol, etc. You may see it in the code, but there won't be any theory or reasoning behind it to help you.<p>As a side note, you can track your learning progress by how much you hate XCode with specific examples of how it ruined your day.<p>Can't speak to clutch.io, but the other 2 just seem to get in the way of someone who already knows Ruby, C#, and obj-c. Do you really need another layer of abstraction if you want to learn something at a lower level?

Big Nerd Ranch guides are indispensable. Written by someone who was involved with NextStep very early on.<p>Watch the Wwdc videos, starting at 2010, and following with 2011.<p>Use ARC.<p>Pay attention to the Wwdc videos on core animation.<p>Spend time learning about delegates.<p>Don't shy away from Interface Builder.<p>Check the header files when documentation seems incomplete. They are a great resource.

I was more or less the same as you, Java instead of C#. Built some of the apps on <a href="http://www.codercowboy.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.codercowboy.com</a> in a few weeks with help from this book, very highly recommended:<p>The iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook by Erica Sadun<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-iOS-Developers-Cookbook-Programmers/dp/0321832078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#38;qid=1336371521&#38;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-iOS-Developers-Cookbook-Programmer...</a><p>A few (three or four) zero-to-go chapters in about 50 pages, then entire chapters dedicated on various chunks of the IOS objective-c library. Perfect.

Start with the Stanford course. It's the best free resource out there. Find a local meetup. Go to a couple hackathons.<p>re: other comments -<p>Apple's docs aren't great, in fact I hate them. Haven't put my finger on why.<p>I like some of the controls at <a href="http://cocoacontrols.com" rel="nofollow">http://cocoacontrols.com</a><p>I wouldn't start with Arc. Especially since you're comfortable in C.

Started iOS dev about a year ago. Hvaent written dozens of apps some with very custom UI elements. Don't bother with clutch.io/rubymotion/mono touch. Learn the raw Objective-C/Cocoa-Touch APIs. Especially for something UI intensive like flipboard. Check out Standford iOS programming lectures. They are on Youtube and iTunes (for free).

Going down the same road myself. Here is my page of links (<a href="http://iosln.com" rel="nofollow">http://iosln.com</a>)

I keep getting stopped up at the first step: Buy an Apple Computer. If I can ever build IOS apps on Linux, I may move on to step two.