Best Way To Get Started With Mac Development

Question

I just recently got my first mac. I do lots of programming on windows but now I want to get into Mac development. What are some languages i should know or tools i should use to

Answer 1

If you have Windows experience but also want to develop Mac software you might consider looking into REALbasic. It doesn't give you complete access to the Mac OS X Cocoa framework, but it can be used to make some slick Mac apps. And it's really easy to get started with.

Answer 2

Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) by Aaron Hillegass:

Fantastic book and the author has alot of credibility - Apple brought him in to train their developers on Cocoa.

Answer 3

For desktop apps, cocoa+objective-c are the way to go. XCode is the best editor for that. For webapps, I'd check out Ruby on Rails and Textmate.

If you've done Java development, you can keep on doing that, too. Eclipse will be very familiar.

Answer 4

I second hunterjrj's suggestion of Aaron Hillegass's book.

Another book that I'm reading at the moment which is a good tour of Xcode 3 is Fritz Anderson's Xcode 3 Unleashed.

Apple's development website also has lots of programming guides and video. Sign up at developer.apple.com. If you have an apple.com account already (or iTunes) it is easy to extend that to a developer membership. Note that you don't get all the developer info unless you pay for a full ADC membership. But all the API docs and programming guides are available without paying.

Answer 5

I've joined the Mac Developer Network, and subscribe to the many podcasts there. Not a reference mind, you just a place to keep you motivated on your journey.

Answer 6

Check out Apple's Mac Dev Center