Once a framework has been established, the reader is now ready for a more Macintosh specific book to help them learn application development. A follow-up book to Learn C on the Mac is Learn Objective–C on the Mac (Learn Series) by Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knaster.

The Objective-C book, like the Learn C book, is published by Apress publishing. They do a very good job of editing the text and organizing the books to make them understandable and flow appropriately.

It should be noted that the Objective-C for the Mac book is not a beginning programming book. It rightfully assumed that the reader has experience in software development and specifically in C. Without this experience the subjects covered in this book will quickly go over the reader’s head leaving them confused and frustrated.

Learn Objective-C on the Mac begins with a description of the extensions to C that make up Objective-C. This affords the reader with necessary background information for what is different over and beyond the standard C language.

After an introduction to object oriented programming the book discusses the Macintosh development tool suite that makes up Xcode. The Xcode environment is integral in the text of this book and provides a good reference for the toolset.

Besides basic coding, Learn Objective-C on the Mac offers good information on memory management and optimization techniques that will be invaluable to the budding Mac developer.

This book is not an easy read. The best way to utilize it is as a reference and a companion while attempting the code on a computer. Unless you have tremendous amount of prior software development experience it would be hard to follow the examples just on paper.

From a perspective of learning Xcode and the nuances of Objective-C on the Macintosh this book will do a decent job of introducing the terms and gives you enough information that you can delve in further in areas you might find interesting.

This may not be the ultimate Macintosh development manual but it contains enough good information and programming examples that it will get you up and running in minimal time and by the end of the book you should have the knowledge necessary to be a Macintosh developer.

Suffice it to say there is no easy answer to what is the right book or training that will make you a Macintosh developer. The good news is there are many avenues you can take to learn programming on the Macintosh and many of them will be dependent upon what your level of knowledge is going into the development process.

Recently I have found myself trying to get developers up to speed quickly not necessarily on the Macintosh OS X operating system but to get them through the basics so that they can begin developing for the iPhone.

Many of those asking for a recommendation come from a background of design or other non-programming related background. From that perspective it is necessary to begin to build a foundation of programming while introducing the tools they will ultimately utilize for development.

When the Macintosh was first released in 1984, many of the routines in the Mac ROM were Pascal based. A thorough knowledge of Pascal helped when developing applications that ran on the original Mac. As the Macintosh evolved, the development platform migrated to a more standard based set of tools.

With the introduction of OS X, Apple moved the underpinnings of their operating system to a Unix kernel, which allowed tighter integration with C as the preferred development language. C was well on its way to being the de-facto standard long before this time but in my opinion the move to OS X sealed the deal.

So anyone wanting to learn Macintosh development now really should have a basis is C and specifically in Objective-C which most of Apple’s tools will utilize. Since Objective-C is based on C I find it easier to recommend a good C book as the beginning introduction to Mac programming.

I have been recommending Learn C on the Mac (Learn Series) written by Dave Mark. This is a very good introduction to the C language and the examples all use Apple’s XCode tool suite as the editor to give the reader a good basis for using the tools they will have to be familiar with in the long term.

The book is a good mixture of history, theory, and common sense and was written not for the techie but for a typical user who has little background or knowledge for programming. This is definitely a beginning-programming book.

If you have prior C experience or any C-type language for that matter, this is not the book you want. If however you are a computer user who wants to begin to learn to develop applications this is a good primer that will begin your journey to becoming a developer.

The programming examples are fairly simple and are not Macintosh specific. The code output is primitive and uses just the console. It does not delve into the power of the Macintosh specific calls nor does it explain the nuances of UI development. It simply teaches the constructs of C.

Having this basis though will allow the reader to gain a basic knowledge and understanding of the C language, which can then be built upon by a follow-up book such as Learn Objective–C on the Mac (Learn Series) by Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knaster.

Learn C on the Mac is a fairly quick read if you are just scanning the book. The benefit really comes from building the example code and getting a hands-on experience with the XCode integrated development environment (IDE).

For those who do not want to type the code themselves, Mark provides a link to the Apress web site that has a zip file of all code examples contained in the book. This way the reader can open the files without actually having to do any keyboarding.

I’ve seen computer users with no background in programming emerge with at least a framework of knowledge they can build on by using this book. It will not make you a full-fledged Macintosh developer but will begin you down that path. For that reason I would recommend Learn C on the Mac as a good book to help anyone regardless of their age learn programming on the Macintosh.