Step into Xcode

My compatriot Fritz Anderson has shipped Step into Xcode, an Addison-Wesley tome covering Xcode 2.2.

I highly recommend it. Fritz delivers exactly what Xcode has needed for so long: a deep narrative covering common development tasks. He weaves together all the aspects of using Xcode by covering the development of a simple application from its humble command-line "hello world" roots to a Cocoa Core Data document-based GUI application with Spotlight importer.

Fritz’s book reads more like a story than a reference. It’s a rare book about an IDE you’ll want to read front-to-back, cover-to-cover. I suppose that’s because the book is less about Xcode itself than development, using Xcode. Unlike a lot of the hit-and-run development books out there, I think this one will age well in the face of future Xcode versions. Sure, the Xcode-specific details will grow outdated, but the underlying development tao is timeless.

The book is deep, and Fritz is an Xcode expert. I’m pretty handy with Xcode, still I had a bunch of insights and “I didn’t know you could do that!” moments when I proofread a draft.

The book comes with a CD, and has an accompanying website and blog (a subsection of Fritz’s blog).

While I’m gushing about books, let me point to two other deep+practical titles: Dalrymple+Hillegass’s Advanced Mac OS X Programming and Gelphman+Laden’s Programming with Quartz. In particular, PwQ is beautiful like a book on Quartz should be.

Disclosure: I received an honorarium for proofreading Fritz’s book. Other authors: if you’d also like to pay me to read your great book, I can begrudgingly make arrangements.

Saturday, February 11, 2006
03:48 PM