Rating:  - I enjoy this book
I am a professional Java developer and working with object oriented design every day. Originally I thought let me just pick up a Cocoa book and start the coding quickly. I then realize that Objective-C is a very different object oriented language. This book does not assume any background of C language, and explain things in real detail from the real Objective-C point of view. After reading this book, I found that Objective-C was an elegant addition on top of the original C programming language. It achieve all object-oriented features without over complicate the original language. If you want to learn Objective-C, this is definitely the book to start from. Since Objective-C is supported by GCC compiler, this book also tells you what is Mac OS X specific, and what is supported by all platform.
Rating:  - Good book to teach yourself
This book was quite easy to read. Although I have some limited programming experience, I think this would be easy for someone who is not expereienced in programming at all. The exercises and descriptions in the book were easy to understand and helped by having you write code that applies the principles in ways that reinforce the ideas. My one knock on the book is that it does not go into Xcode which is what you use to develop code on a Mac. However, I think that might be another book in itself for those of us that aren't very experienced with programming.
Rating: - Great Resource
This is a great book I haven't finished it yet, since the semester started, but so far it's been very clear and effective. It introduces the idea of objects early and effectively, which is nice for someone who already knows how to program in C and wants to learn how Objective-C can be supplement what I already know.
Rating: - Excellent
This is a great book for a beginning Objective C programmer. The only con is that it is a little out-dated and slow. Still though for beginning Mac OS X programmers it is indispensable.
Rating: - One of the Best Instructional Books Ever
Kochan is an educator and that comes through VERY clearly. To give you some perspective on where this review comes from - I am a Macintosh Systems Engineer. Before Kochan's book, I had read part of the Second Edition Absolute Beginners Guide to C by Perry, which was great, then tried to read Hillegass's Cocoa book and had to give up. I moved on to my certifications and installing Xserves, learning to shell script in Bash and all that jazz then came back to programming with Kochan's book.
ANYONE INTERESTED IN COCOA PROGRAMMING WHO DOES NOT KNOW OBJECTIVE C SHOULD READ THIS BOOK FIRST. You may be able to get away with not reading it if you are already a programmer familiar with object oriented programming. But for a server admin like myself, this book was a godsend. You may not even need to learn C before reading this, though it couldn't hurt. Certainly I was not an expert in C when I picked this book up.
The examples are great and give you some useful tools with which to build your own programs. Everything you read on Cocoa programming will be MUCH easier if you wade your way througth this masterpiece first. This book is strictly Objective-C. No Cocoa. It's implied that you're probably reading it because you'll want to program for Macs (and I certainly did), but it remains platform agnostic. And it is not a hard read at all! Well, the section on operators and variable types is a bit dry, but when you get back into loops, qualifiers and conditions, you'll start smiling again!
I love programming. I have always thought of it as a combination of geometry (postualtes and theorems) and algebra that allows you to be infinitely creative. Kochan's book makes Objective-C seem like an easy place to start building your applications and tapping the power of your computer! I am grateful for this text!
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