Programming in C (4th Edition) (Developer's Library)

First and foremost, this is an excellent book. Everything is explained very well with not too much "fluff". I found a few errors in the text but that's to be expected in any programming book.

Now the reason I gave it only 4 stars is because of the style of the code. He uses "thisVar" or "this_var" in programs and many times uses both in the same program! The same for braces. He goes from same-line braces to line-after braces many times in the same program!

For those unaware, that's:

blahBlah {
....
}

and

blahBlah
{
....
}

This doesn't affect the functionality, but when coding in the real world you need a consistent style. These are the only issues I have with this book.

Programming in Objective-C describes the basis of the Objective-C language. Several good chapters. The book is from 2003 and relates to Project Builder the tool before Xcode. Currently Xcode version 3 is around. The book lacks what must be newer lauguage features Objective-C 2.0 like @synthesize.
The book needs to be modernized.
I bought the book for making iPhone applications, for this the book is too old.

There are two C books you absolutely need to read. This one, and "C Programming: A Modern Approach". don't bother with the K&R C book - It's so outdated. I frequently hear people say that the only C book u need is the K&R book, but they're so wrong!

Amazing book, great to learn C programming! My professor required it for my CSE class, and It's helped me alot. Shipping and everything was great, the store Prime for students. Much cheaper than the $40 the school was selling the book for.

I found the book list after the quarter begun, and an assignment deadline was coming. I was extremely worried about the book coming on time but voila the book was there in the mailbox before I expected it. Fast shipping and a very good price.

This package includes a DVD full of about 8 hours worth of videos. I bought this product because other iPhone books I've purchased skip much of the fundamentals of Objective-C. Specifically, Head First iPhone Development and iPhone 3 Development. Both are great books, but difficult to get through if you aren't familiar with Objective-C's goofy "backwards" syntax.

While the book is as advertised, a fundamental course on Objective-C, the videos are unprofessionally produced. As a customer of Lynda.com, my expectation for technical videos like this is pretty high, unfortunately these videos are more akin to something found in the dregs of YouTube.

While the presenter clearly knows his stuff, he is way too dry and unprofessional in his presentation. The whole thing feels like an amateur production as he often fumbles over his presentation, frequently correcting himself or making basic mistakes (like forgetting to show you how to save in XCode in the very first chapter.)

It's unfortunate livelessons didn't spend more time editing the presentation and performing multiple takes when a mistake was made, and overall I'm not satisfied with this purchase. I wanted a video presentation, but I think I would have been better off with a less dry book to go through the Objective-C fundamentals.

This text book starts with the very basics of computer programming and is a good learning tool for people with a wide range of programming experience, from the no nothing to those who might already know a few languages.

This books assumes the reader has no programming experience at all. I can't imagine choosing Objective-C as a first language. And if you are, I would discourage you from doing so.

If you have some software programming experience at all, you will find most of this book a waste of time and space on your shelf.

Dry, boring. Makes chapters way to long and the examples are far to simple. Never really shows how C is used in a modern context. Reading a quick reference gives the same overview of C but you won't waste hours and hours of your life doing so. Head First series aren't my favorite, but Head First C is awesome and a much better choice for learning C.

`Programming in C' is a comprehensive guide for programmers of all levels. With a title this broad I immediately had a bunch of questions but the foremost concern was this, why should I bother with this title over K&R's The C Programming Language? And perhaps that's a useful point of reference to describe this book.

As someone who had a reasonable background knowledge of C my objective was to fill the gaps in my knowledge and also retain a practical reference. To use a crude analogy, K&R's title is kind of like the Bible, it's a classic but reading it from cover to cover can be a real challenge. In contrast Kochan's book is much, much more readable and as such, I'd even argue, a distinctly better tool for newcomers to learn the language.

Of course the real challenge is in providing a readable text that has sufficient depth for more experienced programmers. I see this problem as a careful balance between writing a tutorial and writing a language specification. Like K&R's classic, Kochan has carefully included vital details of the language throughout the text and examples. This is so important to more experienced C programmers seeking deeper truths about the language.

There are also a few features of the book I particularly like, foremost the full and complete examples. Rather than orphaned snippets of code, Kochan has chosen to include elegant yet complete examples that demonstrate a compilable piece of code. I find this reduces ambiguity in this text without adding too much bulk. Also, there are well written introductions to topics such using make, debugging with gdb and object-oriented programming.

If I had to make one criticism, it would be one of personal preference. Kochan's naming conventions and formatting are not my cup of tea. I tend to stay in the Pike / Torvalds camp and as such I'd beg to differ with Kochan on his use of variables names and typedefs. However, that debate will never end and I'm secure enough to say I'll agree to disagree.

With both K&R and Kochan's titles in my collection, I'm pleased to say I've now been turning to his first; that is when I'm not searching Stack Overflow instead.

The price listed is over $800.00. REALLY???? Maybe if you had Steve Kochan teaching you in person. Whoever is selling it for this price must think people are stupid or it was a really bad typo on the sellers part. Just buy the latest edition of the book until the new Livelessons comes out in April 2013 for less than $50.00

The blurb states, "All the features of the C language are covered in this book, including the latest additions added with the C11 standard." This is not true at all. In the whole book, I counted just six sentences that were added to mention the existence of C11. In fact, the 4th edition is essentially identical to the 3rd.

I rated the 3rd edition highly and still do. This is an elementary introduction and the new features of C11 are things that would not naturally be covered at this level. The one-star rating is because of the false claim and because the changes to the text are really too trivial to justify printing a new edition.

The book is oriented to novice programmers. It makes the big initial step of assuming you are ready to go with GCC on Unix/Linux, but from there the level is very elementary. I would say it is pitched lower than Horton's Beginning C. Kochan is very careful about explaining each new term, and he assumes no experience in developing algorithms. To illustrate language features, he slowly discusses the thought process in developing short (<20 loc) programs, like doing story problems. His sample programs tend to be very clean and clearly illustrate the point.

Compared to Prata's C Primer Plus, the presentation is linear and not as wordy, though there are still long stretches of narrative with no code. The writing is exceptionally clear without babying you, but may be too gradual for an experienced programmer to enjoy. Kochan is at a similar level and pace as Prata but is half the length, so it has less detail. I often felt there were important points not mentioned. For example, Kochan doesn't point out when something is C99 only, and is not so good at warning of gotchas. Prata generally gives much more on the why of things, but presents much more text to wade through.

When it comes to teaching a programming language, no single book can possibly please the entire spectrum of readers. Therefore, the statement on the back cover "Whether you're a novice or experienced programmer [...]" is misleading. If you're an absolute beginner, you'll find the first couple of chapters difficult and disorienting. On the other hand, if you're already fluent in another programming language - especially one which has some similarities to C - you'll find many explanations too wordy, at times even redundant.

However, if you happen to have a little experience with programming, and decided to take the step and start learning C in depth, this book should definitely be somewhere at the top of your list: It introduces the essentials of the language in an very, very clear way.

To be sure, this is no crash course. There are no bells and whistles, no fancy graphics, no funny inside stories about language quirks or amazing programs to impress your grandma. Instead, what you get here is a serious, solid and comprehensive basis for C. The material is presented essentially from the bottom up, slowly and carefully, with excellent explanations and great exercises (without solutions!). Some may consider these dry, but remember they were not meant to entertain: they are there to make you think, understand and develop your C skills, and do a great job at that. There are also useful appendices with info about C and standard libraries for quick reference.

It should also be noted that this is not a book about algorithms and efficient programming techniques. While such topics are mentioned here and there, they are definitely not the focus. For instance, Recursion is mentioned and demonstrated only briefly, enough perhaps for a taste of what the word means, but not enough to prepare the reader for any real-world uses. Now, this is not a real downside of the book itself as it is not its purpose. I do think, however, that more attention should have been given to low-level aspects of the language (e.g. word alignment in memory), considering that after all, C today is used mostly for lower-level applications and even microcontrollers. Speaking of which, there IS a good coverage of bit manipulations which are essential for MCU programming. Also, a few tweaks in the text are in order, for example moving the part about memory addresses to the beginning of the chapter about pointers, instead of leaving it to the end; This could really assist "noobs" in understanding the tough concept of pointers.

In summary, for beginners with a flare for programming and the willingness to sit and learn in earnest, "Programming in C" is a highly recommended introduction to the C language; Experienced programmers who wish to expand their knowledge and horizons may want to look for other resources instead, or as a complement.

Having not seen too many textbooks on this topic I'm not sure if it's considered very well-written. The explanations are mostly easy to follow but examples seem more theoretical/ academic than real world/practical. For someone out of college and working in the real world, it's not as practical and easily accessible as other popular titles on the shelves thesedays.

WHAT'S GOOD?
Jesse Liberty is a respected author who was written about the Microsoft platform and development languages for a long time. Because of this, he really knows his material and it shows in this book.
Jesse has a website where he personally supports all of the books that he's written, allowing the reader to get up-to-date information and error corrections.
Also, as an experienced author, Jesse Liberty knows how to keep the pace going in a book and explain the key concepts so you are enlightened but generally not bored.
The book is published by O'Reilly which maintains a site for the book and where you can Code Samples from the text, as well as error corrections, etc.
WHAT'S BAD?
Speaking about those errors. The book is full of them! O'Reilly, as well as all other book publishers are racing to the presses with books about .NET and the Framework in an attempt to be the first. But the book can be very frustrating to read with all of these errors. There are mispellings in the code, code examples are repeated twice, and some of the information is just plain wrong.
To O'Reilly's credit, they have already released a second edition of the book to address this issue and therefore are listening to their readers.
WHAT'S TO CONSIDER?
The scope of the book is ambitious. The preface of the book makes it seem like there should be a three-volume set instead of one book. Jesse Liberty tries to make the book accessible to beginning programmers, as well as advanced programmers, and those coming to C# with no prior experience with the C-style languages.
In addition to covering the language of C# itself, Jesse tries to touch on some of the key classes in the .NET Framework itself. A discussion of the Framework already fills several books and the copious documentation available for free from Microsoft. It needs to be touched on here, but of course, it can't be covered in detail and something always get's left out.
Because Jesse tries to make the book accessible to all, those who are experienced Java or C++ developers will be bored with the first few chapters and breeze through them in an attempt to get to information that is new.
IN CONCLUSION...
All in all, the book is alright, and certainly filled in the gaps left by the MSDN documentation, but if it were up to me, I would probably have waited until even the 3rd edition to get the most bang for my buck.

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!

Yesterday I bit the bullet and installed VisualStudio.NET beta 2. Bringing up the IDE, I thought, "I guess its time to finally buy a C# book." Inside C# (Archer) reads very well, but it is more of an over view than an in depth treatment. Professional C# (Wrox authors) seems to cover *a lot* of ground, but because of its breadth, depth is not uniform. C# and the .NET Platform (Troelsen) seems exceptionally good, and has been my leading choice.
Today, though, I came across Programming C# (Liberty). From Liberty's other books, I know that he is a careful, thoughtful author, and that he is able to explain things well. His skill is clearly evident in this book. Programming C# goes into even more detail and depth than Troelsen's book. I also appreciate that Liberty puts C# and .NET in the context of other development tools, for such touchstones make the going easier. It is a welcoming book for many classes of readers. Reading various parts of Programming C#, it is clear Liberty has worked hard and effectively to craft an exceptional text. I'm grateful to have waited and to be able to begin my journey into this new programming model with such a helpful, pleasant guide.

I have ADHD. Norrmally reading computer books takes so much energy out of me that I don't easily retain the information. I have to read the same thing over and over again. This video and book combo is EXACTLY what I've been waiting for. I started watching the video first. The narrator started off with the intro. It wasn't very interesting until he got to the got to the explanation of the IDE I really got hooked. I watch the video then use the book when I need to fill in the blanks if I missed something on the video. I'm finally having fun.

I don't understand why the the other reviewers are complaining. The price is fair especially considering video training usually costs a whole lot more. The fact that it's in sync with the book is great as far as I'm concerned. A video of the book. Great for me and my ADHD.

Disclosure: I was given this book strictly for the purposes of review from the publisher.

As a Programmer attempting to learn C from the ground up, This was an invaluable resource. Other comments mention that this book is highly similar to the third edition. I cannot comment on that, seeing as I have not read it.
Regardless, this edition of the book covers the basics of C programming to the letter.

Pros: Straightforward explanations of all pertinent individual traits of the C language.
The information provided was basic enough to begin programming with.
Some of the information was useful as a programmer with previous experience in other languages, but became tedious to read about entry level concepts that I was familiar with.

Cons: Tendency to be very information dense... But this is a text book.
in some dense pockets, I found myself rereading the page to ensure gestation of the information.

Overall: A great resource for reference as a novices. otherwise, a good reference for those who are familiar with the essentials of higher languages.

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!

Yesterday I bit the bullet and installed VisualStudio.NET beta 2. Bringing up the IDE, I thought, "I guess its time to finally buy a C# book." Inside C# (Archer) reads very well, but it is more of an over view than an in depth treatment. Professional C# (Wrox authors) seems to cover *a lot* of ground, but because of its breadth, depth is not uniform. C# and the .NET Platform (Troelsen) seems exceptionally good, and has been my leading choice.
Today, though, I came across Programming C# (Liberty). From Liberty's other books, I know that he is a careful, thoughtful author, and that he is able to explain things well. His skill is clearly evident in this book. Programming C# goes into even more detail and depth than Troelsen's book. I also appreciate that Liberty puts C# and .NET in the context of other development tools, for such touchstones make the going easier. It is a welcoming book for many classes of readers. Reading various parts of Programming C#, it is clear Liberty has worked hard and effectively to craft an exceptional text. I'm grateful to have waited and to be able to begin my journey into this new programming model with such a helpful, pleasant guide.

I have ADHD. Norrmally reading computer books takes so much energy out of me that I don't easily retain the information. I have to read the same thing over and over again. This video and book combo is EXACTLY what I've been waiting for. I started watching the video first. The narrator started off with the intro. It wasn't very interesting until he got to the got to the explanation of the IDE I really got hooked. I watch the video then use the book when I need to fill in the blanks if I missed something on the video. I'm finally having fun.

I don't understand why the the other reviewers are complaining. The price is fair especially considering video training usually costs a whole lot more. The fact that it's in sync with the book is great as far as I'm concerned. A video of the book. Great for me and my ADHD.

Disclosure: I was given this book strictly for the purposes of review from the publisher.

As a Programmer attempting to learn C from the ground up, This was an invaluable resource. Other comments mention that this book is highly similar to the third edition. I cannot comment on that, seeing as I have not read it.
Regardless, this edition of the book covers the basics of C programming to the letter.

Pros: Straightforward explanations of all pertinent individual traits of the C language.
The information provided was basic enough to begin programming with.
Some of the information was useful as a programmer with previous experience in other languages, but became tedious to read about entry level concepts that I was familiar with.

Cons: Tendency to be very information dense... But this is a text book.
in some dense pockets, I found myself rereading the page to ensure gestation of the information.

Overall: A great resource for reference as a novices. otherwise, a good reference for those who are familiar with the essentials of higher languages.

This book is the most lucid book on programming I have ever read. Having a little (self-taught) experience in C, this book was recommended to me as a good foundation before trying to learn Cocoa for programming on Max OS X. I fully expected to be confronted with the sort of doorstopper that I would never finish, as has been the case with several C++ books; instead, I found a straightforward, uncluttered guide, written by somebody with a genuine talent for teaching.

The author takes the approach of not trying to teach you C first, and this has two advantages: first, if you have no C experience, you get started immediately learning Objective-C, so you don't get taught one thing only to be told to forget it later; second, if you do have some C experience, you are thrown into object-oriented programming right from the start. The explanations are consistently concise but clear, and I found myself getting through a chapter or two every night after work and feeling that I was learning something significant on every page. I read someone describe it elsewhere as "Teach Yourself Objective-C in 21 Days," except that this book really could live up to such a title. I wholeheartedly agree - it took me only three weeks to work through the whole book, including nearly all of the exercises. If, like me, you have seen terms such as "polymorphism", "inheritance", "instance method" and "subclassing" bandied around only to stare at them in mute incomprehension, this book is a revelation. The author introduces all such major concepts very gently - in fact they seem to creep up on you, so that by the time you are presented with the proper terminology you either already know what it means or find yourself exclaiming - as I did - "Oh, so that's all polymorphism is!"

My only gripe - and it is very minor - is that the explanations of bitwise operators and bitfields are near incomprehensible to anybody who doesn't have a programming background (or rather, they are explained well, but there is no indication of when you would ever use them), and the author does occasionally (though rarely) seem to assume that the reader has a solid maths background (when there are those of us out there from humanities and arts backgrounds who want to learn to program, too). These topics take up little more than several paragraphs of the 500 or so pages, though, so if you're a novice, don't let them daunt you as they are the exception rather than the rule.

One thing I appreciated about this book was that full code is provided for 99% of the examples - you are never left with an example that won't compile because the author assumed you could guess the rest yourself. Moreover, whilst the examples and exercises do develop on code from previous chapters - in particular, you will develop a Calculator, Fraction, and Rectangle class in the first part of the book, and AddressCard and AddressBook classes in the second part - the author wisely avoids the build-one-big-program approach that some books adopt. This keeps things fresh and lively - you have to type in different examples, meaning you become familiar with the language through repetition, but at the same time you are doing different things in the examples themselves. Moreover the exercises at the end of each chapter are well judged - you are forced to think and look back through the book to recap on what you have learned, and they are difficult without being too difficult. (Don't skip them!)

In the second part of the book, the author moves on to the Foundation framework, which forms half of Cocoa (Cocoa also uses the AppKit for creating GUI's). You will learn how to use NSString, NSArray, NSDictionary (and their mutable counterparts) and a lot more. It builds on everything you've learned in Part One and provides a bridge between the basics of Objective-C and moving on to Cocoa. I expect that this part of the book especially will become dog-eared very quickly. To sum up, this book took me from knowing nothing about Ojbective-C to feeling as though I could write all the background code for the app I have in mind (ie. everything except the GUI). I am now just hoping that Hillegass's book on Cocoa is half as good.

A word of advice: I urge anybody who buys this book to print off the errata on the author's website (the address is given in the book), as there are a few minor errors that might stump you if you don't. Also, if you use Xcode instead of the command-line tools, you will need to delete the contents of the automatically-generated ..._Prefix.pch file as well as the #import line at the top of main.m each time you start a project (the book only specifies the latter). The prefix file caused me some headaches in one of the later chapters.

A lot of people on various forums say that this is the only book from which to learn Objective-C, and I can see why. In short, if you are reading this review you are probably thinking about learning Objective-C, either for its own sake or as groundwork for moving on to Cocoa. Which means that if you are reading this review, you should buy this book.

Used as an introduction to C and programming in general in a second year university course. The book is clear, engaging, and aesthetically pleasing. If you have never programmed and you want to start with C, this is a good book for you; if you have programming experience and want to add C to your repertoire, you may find the examples and exercises a tad easy, though if you’re just looking to learn the ropes quickly then this is good.

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.

As someone who uses object-oriented programming on a near-daily basis in the workplace, but who has only academic experience in the C language (from many years back), this was a very digestible book.

I hesitated to purchase the book due to that I see there is a 2nd edition coming up soon (and already available for pre-order), so I was tempted to wait for it, but I decided to make the purchase anyhow, since my objective (no pun intended) was to become grounded in the language, and I figured this would do the trick.

What strikes me the most is the talents of this author, to write lucidly, and precisely, and in a non-intimidating way. I feel it helped to have several years of programming behind me, so the concepts didn't present much issue, but I could see that, in my opinion, it would even be a good first book for learning object oriented programming, and I wouldn't doubt it a bit if I was to discover this book might be used by a number of college instructors as a class textbook.

All in all, this is a very well written book for a very decent programming language. I would recommend it, but keep in mind the possibly fast-approaching 2nd edition if you aren't the type to want to have to buy the book twice.

Excellent!

I got this almost by accident in a bundle of books I picked up on eBay and it is the single best written 'how to learn a language' book I have ever encountered.

Clear, concise and just so well written. Quite complex issues are handled with great skill and deftness.

I have pre-ordered the 2nd edition just to give Kochan the credit he deserves and didn't get from my second-hand purchase.

If you have a Mac and think you want to understand programming (even if you aren't going to really write any programs) get this.

Whatever OS you have go get Kochan's book on C Programming which is nearly as good. Unfortunately C is simply more obtuse so even Kochan's great writing can't make it much easier than he does because it just is closer to the metal with all the power and complexity that that means.

Anyway it's a great book and if you want some of the best coverage of Object Orientated Programming you'll read anywhere it's easily worth the price (especially at the insanely cheap the store price).

This is an excellent book for beginners who want to learn Programming in the C language.

Even if you have no programming experience this book starts at the very beginning explaining everything that you need to know to build programs.

The author is very thorough, and I never felt confused or lost.

The structure of the book is as follows:
The author introduces a concept (i.e. a for loop, an if statement) and then gives you examples of code that utilizes this concept. Then at the end of the chapter there are exercise that you complete by using what you have learned so far in the book. The exercise will typically ask you to write code to perform a specified task.

This book is very hands on, and the reader will be at a computer writing code almost the entire time while reading.

I have finished this book, and now I am writing complex code in C.

Guys who wrote previous reviews summed up the book pretty well. I would just repeat what was already said here. The book is pretty good. If you don't have any book related to C language, this is a good pick. I obtained it to have most up to date package of information. I must admit I chosen it also because of C11 mention, but this information is not as elaborated as it seems (check another review).

The only thing which I dont like on this book are too "mathematical" exercises. I can imagine some beginners could be demotivated by that. But again, it is just my personal feeling.

Nevertheless you will get essential knowledge of C and remember reading this book (or any other programming related) is not enough to be a good programmer. You have to practice! :)

This book was a very good introduction to the Objective-C programming language. Before I bought this book I did have some programming experience in PHP and Perl, but I did not feel like such experience was needed in reading the book. More importantly, it did not matter that I had no previous C or C++ experience. It is important to note that this book does not really cover making applications for Mac OS X in depth. In addition to purchasing this book I also purchased "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass, which did a much better job of covering the specific aspects of making Cocoa applications.

Having just read the entire Wrox "Professional C#" (1200 pages), I thought I might not pick up much here. I was very wrong. Jesse is great at explaining WHY you might want to think about using an interface vs. an abstract base class, something that most books that purport to teach OOP don't even cover very well. He is also a realist and recognizes that at this time it makes no sense to separate c# from the .net runtime, because there are no other implementations of the language. So you get some good .net info as well.

New Mac computers come with a full suite of excellent objective-c programming tools called Xcode. This book is a great way for inexperienced programmers to learn ObjC without feeling overwhelmed. When I first decided I wanted to take up programming for the Mac, I was concerned that I would feel overwhelmed with arcane terminlogy and confusing explanations. I was very gratified to start into this book with no programming experience other than old school apple //c Basic and be able to write simple programs right from the start. That instills a sense of confidence that I think is essential to success in learning. The author makes sure that you understand what each line of code is for and you never feel like you're typing something that you don't understand.

I purchased this book as a bundle with "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass. I actually cracked that book first and successfully programmed my first example program. However in chapter 3 he writes "..this chapter assumes that you already know a little C and something about objects..". Since I have no C experience at all and only know about objects as "things", I put that book down and started with "Programming in Objective-C." I'm glad I did. This book focuses more on learning objective-C and touches only a little bit on how to use Xcode. Once I get further along I'm sure that the Hillegass book will be an excellent book for me to learn from.

If you're looking for 2 books to get you started in programming Objective-C, I would highly recommend the 2 book bundle.